CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

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Chapter 3: Character Set Standards

Phantom Ideographs

While the ideographs that are included in noncoded character set standards have been

carefully accounted for during the development process, there are documented cases of

coded character sets that include ideographs whose origins cannot be determined. ese

are called phantom ideographs, written as  (yūrei kanji) in Japanese.

During the development of JIS X 0208:1997, a team of researchers lead by Kohji Shibano

( shibano kōji) attempted to account for every kanji included in the standard

in terms of sources and references. While some marginal cases were discovered during

this lengthy process, which involved siing through countless name records, at least one

phantom character was identied. It is , which is JIS X 0208:1997 55-27. e description

of the team’s ndings starts on page 291 of the standard document.

Interestingly, any character set standard that is in any way based on JIS X 0208:1997 (such

as vendor extensions thereof, and even Unicode) will inherit this phantom character. e

corresponding Unicode code point for  is 541. e same can be said about other

coded character set standards that happen to include phantom characters.

Incomplete Ideograph Pairs

Several studies of the GB 2312-80 character set standard have been conducted since its

establishment, and some of them point out the fact that for several ...