日本の文字体系は世界一の複雑な文字体系であると同時に、非常に寛容的である。同一漢字とされても正字と別 体(古字・俗字など)が区別される。また、同じ語といっても漢字・仮名・漢字仮名併用の表記が可能な場合が多い。なお、同じ文章であっても書体がいろいろある。著者の意見では、これらの表記法・書法の選択は自由ではない。認識的意味が同一でありながら、感情的意味(内包・調子・語感)が書き表わし方によって変わる。これらの現象を研究する言語学部門を文字文体論と呼べばよいと思う。外国人に日本語を教えるとき、表記法・書体による意味のニュアンスを見逃してはならない。これらのニュアンスを把握するには、旧新・内外・軟硬・陰陽などの相対立概念が有利であろう。The writing system of Japanese is so complex and permissive that one and the same word or sentence often can be written in more than one way, taking the opportunities provided by various forms of the same kanji, various combinations of kanji and kana, and various typefaces and handwritings. The purpose of the article is to show that the choice between the possible notations of a speech unit is not arbitrary, if not always conscious. The difference in notation tends to be interpreted as a difference in meaning, as a kind of aura or flavor that usually is described as stylistic. It is suggested that the relatively new field of research that deals with such means of expression existing solely in script and not paralleled in speech be called graphostylistics, with a subdivision into orthographic stylistics (a part of linguistics proper) and calligraphic stylistics (a part of paralinguistics). The necessity is stressed of explaining these phenomena when teaching Japanese to foreigners. An attempt is made at describing stylistic connotations of the use of various notations (standard and nonstandard kanji, kanji vs. kana, hiragana vs. katakana) in terms of such semantic oppositions as old: new, basic: derived, soft: hard, inner: outer, Yin: Yang and the like