Kanji usage
 

I'm currently in the middle of my first year studying the Japanese language (using the Genki series, if that's relevant). I've been learning the kanji of most of the vocabulary items in the chapter - beyond the relatively simple kanji in the list that accompanies each lesson. I'm doing this since I've studied some Chinese in the past, and so I'm used to learning how to write characters/kanji (I do recognize that the two writing systems differ in some major ways, though).

My Japanese language teacher has been supportive of my learning the kanji in the textbook, but she has made a couple of comments about kanji usage in general that I want to understand a little bit better. They may be gross overgeneralizations - I don't really know. In any case, these comments are:

(1) Japanese people of my generation (I'm in my mid-twenties), and each passing generation, tend to use fewer and fewer kanji in their writing. Japanese women also tend to use fewer kanji in their writing than Japanese males.

(2) There are some kanji that have fallen out of use. She uses the following as descriptive examples:
宜しくお願いします: now usually written as よろしくお願いします
其れ／此れ: now written as hiragana (それ／これ)
有る／在る: now written as ある

The issue is - how do I know if a given kanji is obsolete, rarely used (or used by elder males), or just not used by my generation? I really don't want to overuse kanji any more than I need to.

This may not be so relevant, but I'm deaf, so this issue is especially important because the only way I can express myself in Japanese is through writing. I want to be able to use the "appropriate" amount of kanji in my writing :)

Thanks!

Depending on which dictionary you use, it will tell you if a word is usually written using Kana alone. For example, Find words - Denshi Jisho

WWWJDIC does the same.

Apart from that I'm not sure if there's a surefire way to know. The best thing is probably exposure. The lack of Kanji mostly applies to very common words (such as これ、よろしくお願いします, etc). Since these words a very common you'll see them all the time and automatically realize that the original Kanji are not used. Also, if the word is common and the Kanji is rather difficult it's also likely that it's not being used. I wouldn't worry about it too much, you'll pick it up naturally. Also, if you type in Japanese on your PC/Mac it will most likely suggest the correct writing as a first choice. If I write よろしく、I won't get 宜しく if I don't explicitly go through the list and choose it.

Somewhere on JF I think masaegu or another native Japanese speaker posted a link to a publishing guide or university site or something identifying broad categories of words for which kana is preferred. I can't find the bookmark offhand.

In the meantime, for whatever it's worth, Wikipedia-JA has a guide for their preferred style of writing: Wikipedia:表記ガイド - Wikipedia

It includes their adopted conventions for kanji usage. You might check it out for a little instruction (although their conventions don't match up with Japanese newspaper conventions perfectly).

Thanks, KyleGoetz and Pogopuschel, for your responses to my post!

My Japanese textbook has kanji for a lot of the vocabulary items in the book, but there are definitely some items where the kanji is not listed (which is surprising to me as they are not that difficult). Examples:

わかる (分かる)
つまらない (詰まらない)
眼鏡をかける (? I'm not even sure which kanji is used as there are several)

Thanks again :)

わかる is one thing, but for つまらない, the kanji has a different meaning than kana alone. Using kanji there would not only be wrong, but would mean something entirely different.
It sounds like you are assuming that if a kanji exists, then it would have originally been used. The thing is, that is not the case. There are countless words that have never been written with kanji, and which it would be incorrect to attempt to write with them.

It was me, I am sure but I failed to bookmark it then and now I cannot find it again.

How easy or difficult the kanji are has very little to do with it. It is more a matter of taste. You could look very uneducated or to be of bad taste for writing the words in kanji that the majority of us do not. This is one important factor that Japanese-learners with a Chinese background will always face.

As Nyororin stated, the meaning of a word will often change completely depending on how it is written. To use one of your examples:

つまらない = boring
詰まらない = not packed, not stuffed, not clogged, etc.　

Thanks, Nyororin and masaegu, for your responses :)

So, I get that using excessive kanji is in poor taste. I suppose, then, that I should look up each new kanji I encounter and hope that the usage description in that entry is accurate (if any specific usage is delineated there to begin with). Is there a better way to address this issue, though?

I agree with masaegu that overuse of kanji is a problem with people who have a background in Chinese language. It is difficult for me to "unlearn" a kanji that I know should only be written in hiragana (especially if I know the kanji already from Chinese language studies).

Also, I'm a little confused by the lookup method. I looked up つまらない in Jim Breen's dictionary and it shows the kanji for that word right next to the hiragana. That entry doesn't seem to say anything about it being more common to write the word in hiragana. jisho.org does though. Anyway, I promise I do understand your point, and know better than to question those who are intimately familiar with the Japanese language :D

Your main problem is that you're using a dictionary meant for converting between English and Japanese (WWWJDIC) when you ought to be using a Japanese-only dictionary for this type of thing. Also note this is a stylistic problem, not a language problem, usually. As such, a dictionary is not really the right tool. You can't learn how to use apostrophes from an English dictionary! The word "can't" may appear in the dictionary, but you cannot expect to have your writing taken seriously in business if you use that word. The proper word is "cannot."

Reading, writing and getting corrected a whole lot is probably the only way you will learn this. There are no written rules per se regarding these phenomena; All there is are tendencies and senses of aesthetics.

Languages change through time. Words keep losing and adding meanings. I was just talking to another learner about the following pair of words.

適当（てきとう） written in kanji means "appropriate".
テキトー written in kana means "random".

Those mean just about the opposite things. :)