Where does the kanji writing system come from?

Kanji are adopted Chinese characters that are used in the Japanese writing system, first introduced to Japan in the 5th century. Before the introduction of Chinese characters, no Japanese writing system existed. Kanji are used for writing nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. For grammatical endings and words without corresponding kanji, two additional, syllable based scripts are being used, hiragana and katakana.