I think many of you already know that Japanese mainly used the old kana orthography (旧仮名遣い) before the 1946 reform, so the texts mentioned below use it as well. Also note the traditional forms of kanji (even though shortened forms were already used in handwriting for centuries).
I picked a pretty typical text (mostly because it's well-known and printed, for simplicity):
Futabatei Shimei's (二葉亭四迷) Ukigumo (浮雲). (scans)
I should note that such orthography is typical-ish for Edo texts as well (aside from some kana usages, and also Edo texts typically have much less kanji, but it depends on the genre), but they were mainly written in cursive (even when they were printed), so maybe I'll cover that aspect in some later post.
- Obsolete reduplication marks (your beloved)
- Usage of katakana for interjections, onomatopoeia, "small symbols" and similar stuff
- Alternative kana forms
Most syllables/morae could be written with a number of different symbols. The modern kana set was standardized in 1900, but every pre-1900 text will use them. Note that not all of them are in the Unicode, as there were hundreds of them (tons of them are pretty obsolete, of course). Different texts have different preferences, but the ones used here are pretty common overall.
And so on…
This was true for katakana too, but most variants (hundreds of them) have died out after Heian. 子 for ne is one of the most common ones, somewhat even more common than ネ (from 祢) which was chosen as a standard form.
And yes, they were used randomly. Here's how しかし is written on the first three pages of the text.
- Ligatures
Stuff like ヿ (koto) or ゟ (yori) was common (especially in legal texts), but not here. Here's the ligature for "mairase sooroo" though (kinda like modern "-(i)mas-" but very humble).
- Obsolete kanji usage
Many words were written not like they are written now. Moreover, there wasn't some sort of standardization, so it's pretty messy. Some usages are more common than others though, but it depends on time/genre/author.
Unrelated to this text, but just want to show how bad it was: e.g. the verb nom- had forms 呑む, 嚥む, 喫む, 服む, 哺む, etc in premodern texts; on the other hand, the glyph 飲 could be used for yar- (飲る) "to do" (in the context of drinking), ike- (飲ける) "to be good at" (in the context of drinking), agar- (飲がる) "(to eat), to drink" (honorific), tabe- (飲べる) "(to eat), to drink", mizukaw- (飲う) "to water (horses)", etc.
- Rare (from modern POV) kanji
Also, there were tons of kanji not even in the 1st level of Kanji Kentei (not only in pre-1900 works, but also in works written before the kanji standardization, like Natsume Sōseki's, etc).
I won't list them as pictures, but rather as plain text: 掙 (kaseg-), 踠 (mogak-; still rarely used), 灔 (in 瀲灔 ren'en), 芣苢 (onbako), 癯 (yase-), etc. Some kanji I collected from other orthographically premodern (but linguistically modern, so not like Edo) books: 愜 (kanaw-), 愺 (futamek-), 瞪 (mihar-), 眴 (mimawas-), 睼 (mimukae-), 眊 (kasume-, kumore-, madorom-), 靚 (mekas-), 𠹤 (sosonokas-), 捥/𢪸 (mog-, moge-), 拽 (hippar-), 㩳 (oshidas-), 踢 (ker-), 踽 (yoromek-), 迨 (oyob-), 逭 (nogare-), 𩛰 (asar-), 翥 (soras-), 髐 (sarabae-), 剡 (sog-), 夤 (matsuwar-), 漐 (shitor-), 廋 (kakus-), 邈 (hiro-), 憥 (urusa-), 皛 (shirajirashi-), 眶 (mabuta), 袼 (wakiake), 𣠽 (tsuka), 磤 (hata), 燄 (honoo), 膁 (yowagoshi), 颰 (kogarashi), 翮 (habushi), 晷 (hi), 齁 (ibiki), 哱 (ho), 謊 (baka), etc etc.
That's it for this post, but I want to share this reprint of an old book I saw on twitter (I don't know what book is that, I'm afraid, but maybe 鬼利至端破却論傳, judging from the contents?). Just because its orthography is indeed very cool and smooth!
by Panates