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In Late Old Japanese, tari-adjectives developed as a variant of nari-adjectives. Most nari-adjectives became na-adjectives in Modern Japanese, while tari-adjectives either died out or survived as taru-adjective fossils, but a few nari adjectives followed a similar path to the tari-adjectives and became naru-adjective fossils. They are generally ...
A few nari adjectival nouns followed a similar path to tari adjectival nouns, becoming naru adjectives in Modern Japanese (analogous to taru adjectives), rather than na adjectives as most nari adjectival nouns did. These include 単なる tannaru "mere, simple" or 聖なる seinaru "holy" and are generally classed as rentaishi.
Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. In language typology, it has many features different from most European languages.
The Japanese copula (most often translated into English as an inflected form of "to be") is unique among verbs in Japanese. It is highly irregular, and in several ways behaves in ways other verbs do not; such as requiring a separate relativised form in some circumstances, and acting simply as a marker of formality/politeness with no predication ...
Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and an adverbial particle (e.g. tobidasu "to fly out, to flee", from tobu "to fly, to jump" + dasu "to put out, to emit"). There are three types of adjectives (see Japanese adjectives):
However, as particles in Japanese directly modify the preceding noun, some Japanese language courses call this the "goal of movement" usage because it marks the goal of the movement. For example, in the sentence 私はうちに帰ります ( Watashi wa uchi ni kaerimasu or "I'm going back home") the goal of the movement is home ( uchi ni ).
I maintain that the the words that are traditionally called "adjectives" in Japanese are verbs, because that is the syntactic (and morphological) behavior they exhibit. On the other hand, there are some "true" adjectives in Japanese, words whose only syntactic function is to modify nouns. So there you have it. I hope this helps.
Okurigana (送り仮名, Japanese pronunciation: [okɯɾiɡana], "accompanying letters") are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way.