Is there, even if it's speculative, any explanation to the squareness of kanji
characters?

Why are 口, 回 or 円 not circles or round like の, for example?

Was making circles with early day tools too clumsy? If at the beginning they
had to scratch a hard surface, I can imagine that straight lines were easier
to draw.
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etymology calligraphy
Squareness of kanji characters
Kanji were originally usually written with a brush, and it's easier to read
and write block shapes and right angles, so the commonest form of writing,
kaisho (楷書) used right angled lines. But there is no reason they have to be
square though, the hiragana like の originated from rounded shapes of a
calligraphic style called sousho (草書).

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tVIKO.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tVIKO.jpg)

As for why they are square dimensionally (sorry if that was not your
question), the first thing to note is that for hundreds of years kanji were
written going downwards only, so the relative horizontal sizes of the
characters were probably less important than the vertical sizes. If you look
at calligraphy it's not clear that anybody insists that the characters all
have to line up horizontally, although they usually line up vertically.

[![Calligraphy example from
Wikipedia](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WR5Ew.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WR5Ew.jpg)

The other thing to note is that for printing with movable type it's much
easier to deal with square type, so probably the reason that kanji typefaces
are all so square was to do with printer's convenience.
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> Was making circles with early day tools too clumsy?

Yes, exactly. Kanji derived from oracle bone script used in ancient China, and
it was indeed difficult to make circles on bones or turtle shells.

> ### [Oracle bone script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script)
>
> Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文) was the form of Chinese characters used on
> oracle bones—animal bones or turtle plastrons used in pyromantic
> divination—in the late 2nd millennium BC, and is the earliest known form of
> Chinese writing.
>
> * * *
>
> Comparing oracle bone script to both Shang and early Western Zhou period
> writing on bronzes, oracle bone script is clearly greatly simplified, and
> rounded forms are often converted to rectilinear ones; **this is thought to
> be due to the difficulty of engraving the hard, bony surfaces, compared with
> the ease of writing them in the wet clay of the molds the bronzes were cast
> from**.

After paper and brushes were invented, it was no longer difficult to make
rounded strokes, and various forms of [cursive
script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_script_\(East_Asia\)) evolved
(hiragana also derived from cursive kanji). Still, the "regular" form remained
full of straight lines and mildly-curved lines.

**EDIT:** As others say, the shapes changed significantly after people stopped
using bones and turtles, so what I have written above is a partial reason.
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This is not an ease-of-writing problem. In fact, drawing circles has gotten
easier over the years, but somehow the ease of drawing circles corresponded to
a decrease in the appearance of them. The decrease was a stylistic (and not so
much practical) choice.

Components which were originally round have almost all changed into a
rectangular/square or other shapes by the time of [clerical
script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_script) (隸書).

> [「口」 was not really
> round](http://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=39). It was a
> picture of a mouth with the corners of the mouth emphasised.

* * *

In terms of "good" circles or spirals, what you generally see is the
following:

  * [Shang Dynasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty) [oracle bones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script): occasional attempts or rough polygon approximations

  * Shang and [Zhou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_dynasty) [bronzeware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_bronze_inscriptions) or [other inscriptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Drums_of_Qin): matured circles and spirals

  * Zhou and [Qin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty) brush scripts (e.g. [Chu Silk Manuscripts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Silk_Manuscript), [Shuihudi Bamboo Texts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuihudi_Qin_bamboo_texts)): matured circles and spirals, with some indications of moving away from them

  * Clerical script: circles and spirals have pretty much disappeared.

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[合集14227](http://www.guoxuedashi.com/jgwhj/?bhfl=1&bh=14227&jgwfl=)``[春秋](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_period)  
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`
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