kanji 有る, usage in the negative be verb

Question

I am curious about a bit of academic pedantry of trivial importance.

If I wanted to put kanji in 日本人ではありません, would I use 有りません? This looks weird to me because 有 has some connotations of possession as opposed to 居る, for example.

Answer 1

There are two kanji for verb ある that are commonly used: 有る and 在る. But neither is natural in your sentence: 日本人では有りません and 日本人では在りません.

Note that this is not because of the negation. 日本人で有る and 日本人で在る also look weird.

In modern Japanese, words with little semantic value are usually written in hiragana. ある in 日本人である is used as a copula in combination with で. Although ある is a verb, it works almost as a function word in these sentences, and therefore it is usually written in hiragana.

Here are some other examples:

本を机の上に置く。
雨が降る前に買い物に行っておく。

急いては事を仕損じる。
車を運転することができる。