No, Japanese characters are not identical to Chinese ones, despite certain resemblances. There are three writing systems in Japanese: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji are characters adopted from Chinese and are used in Japanese to represent words or parts of words. Nevertheless, Japanese and Chinese employ kanji differently, and many kanji have different meanings or pronunciations across the two languages. Additionally, Japanese has its own unique grammar and vocabulary, so even when using kanji, the two languages are distinct.