The writing system used in Japan is called kanji, which is one of the three main scripts in the Japanese writing system alongside hiragana and katakana. Kanji consists of characters borrowed from Chinese, each representing a word or a concept. It is used for nouns, verb stems, and adjectives in written Japanese. The incorporation of kanji allows for the expression of more complex ideas and the differentiation of meanings that can be ambiguous in phonetic scripts alone. While kanji can be challenging to learn due to the sheer number of characters, it remains an integral part of Japanese literacy and culture.