  Some statistical properties of a network of two-Chinese-character compound
words in Japanese language are reported. In this network, a node represents a
Chinese character and an edge represents a two-Chinese-character compound word.
It is found that this network has properties of "small-world" and "scale-free."
A network formed by only Chinese characters for common use ({\it joyo-kanji} in
Japanese), which is regarded as a subclass of the original network, also has
small-world property. However, a degree distribution of the network exhibits no
clear power law. In order to reproduce disappearance of the power-law property,
a model for a selecting process of the Chinese characters for common use is
proposed.
