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Most of the kanji were invented by the Chinese, but some characters were invented by the Japanese. These are known in Japan as kokuji (国字,literally"nationalcharacters"). These kanji often have only a kun'yomi or native Japanese reading, and no on'yomi, or Chinese-derived, reading. For example, the kanji used to write the verbs hataraku and komu are both Japanese inventions. The character for tooge meaning "mountain pass" is a Japanese invention. Some of these characters, such as hataraku, were even re-absorbed back into Chinese and thus gained an on'yomi.
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