As you progress with your Japanese studies, you will see two very important kinds of Hiragana. They are called furigana and okurigana. In this post letâs take a look at each of them and how they both help Japanese learners and natives read Kanji!
But first, let me introduce a chart for the vocabulary that youâll see in this post. Each word is written in Kanji and then in Hiragana, with its part of speech and meaning.
Furigana, also known as ăăżăăȘ or ruby, are the Hiragana characters either on top or to the side of Kanji characters.
As you can see, if the writing is horizontal, the furigana will be on top and if the writing is vertical, it will be on the right side. Either way, furigana tell you how to pronounce the Kanji characters.
There may be anywhere from 1 to 5 Hiragana characters represented by a single Kanji character!
We Japanese learners need furigana when we start studying Kanji and reading Japanese text. But Japanese children also need furigana when they are learning Kanji and even Katakana. Here you can see furigana used to learn Katakana characters.
Whether or not you see furigana depends on a few different factors:
Generally, you wonât see many examples of furigana. However, if you pick up a book/novel intended for elementary-aged children, you might see lots of furigana. This is because (like us!) they either havenât learned the Kanjiâs readings or the writer intended the Kanji to be read in a certain way.
Some websites, books, IG posts, Youtube videos, etc that are intended for non-Japanese readers will also have a fair amount of furigana. Granted, it is helpful at first, but itâs a good idea to wane yourself off of furigana as you get better (or if you WANT to get better). The more you see a Kanji character, the more likely you are to remember its reading.
Sometimes furigana doesnât actually tell you the reading of the Kanji. Instead itâs used to add details or add shades of nuance, as in the examples below:
In these cases we call the furigana gikun, which loosely translates to âa false readingâ.
On the left, the Kanji reads ăăŒă, which means âdesire or wishâ but the furigana reads ăČăă, which means âlightâ. This conveys to the reader that light is a metaphor for hope in whatever setting you are seeing that Kanji.Â
On the right, the Kanji reads ăĄăă
ă, which means âEarthâ but the furigana reads ă”ăăăš which means âhome townâ or âwhere someone is fromâ. This tells the reader that someone is an Earthling â as compared to a Martian or an alien from another planet.
This is a more-advanced way that furigana is used, so you wonât see it unless you are reading manga or novels aimed for native speakers.
First the Word, Then the Kanji (Ateji & Jukujikun)
On the day that I arrived in Japan, they asked me for my name in Katakana at the airport. I hadnât really thought about it so they wrote my name how it sounds to the Japanese ear.
A few days later, I was thinking about this, and it occurred to me that in the same way that they just âassigned meâ katakana, I could also give myself Kanji for my name! My name is Albert but I took my nickname Al and âHiraganizedâ it, getting ăă. At this point I needed 1 or 2 Kanji that sounded out ăă. I eventually decided on äșç. Iâll come back to this a bit later.
äșç is what is called ateji. I started with a word and âworked backwardsâ to end up with Kanji, based on their readings. Another example of ateji is the Japanese word for The United States. Written with Hiragana itâs ăăăă, but written with Kanji it becomes:
äș read as ă
米 read as ă
ć© read as ă
ć read as ă
Keep in mind that these Kanji have nothing to do with the meaning of âAmericaâ or âThe U.S.â (whatever that is lol). They were only chosen based on the way you read each Kanji. This is the idea of ateji.
A similar concept is Jukujikun. The word ăăăŁăŠ means âthe day after tomorrowâ. When it came time to assign Kanji to this word, the following 3 were chosen:
æ meaning âtomorrowâ
ćŸ meaning âafterâ
æ„ meaning âdayâ
You can reasonably see how this combination of Kanji can come to mean âthe day after tomorrowâ. The thing is, the actual way you read those Kanji are nowhere close to ăăăŁăŠïŒThey were chosen because of their meanings and not their readings. Itâs almost the reverse of ateji. 2 more examples are:
ä»æ„ is read as ăăă but
ä» is not ăă
and
æ„ is not ă
äžæ is read as ăžă but
äž is not ăž
and
æ is not ă
When it comes to jukujikun, because the furigana canât be separated between the characters, it will appear either in the middle of the characters or stretched across them.
As for my Kanji, because the characters sound out ăă, äșç is ateji. However, I also chose 2 Kanji with meanings that I liked. äș means âAsiaâ and ç means âgemâ so I chose my name to mean âgem of Asiaâ.
Now, letâs talk about okurigana. It is similar to furigana, except that it only appears next to Kanji. Okurigana is thought of as âhanging off ofâ Kanji characters.
The okurigana tells you how you should read the éŁ Kanji. In this particular example, both words mean âto eatâ so mixing them up is not the end of the world (depending on who you are talking with!). Other times, however, the meanings will be drastically different so okurigana is a vital part of Japanese.
Most of the time, youâll find okurigana with adjective and verb forms. This is because they have a core part (called the stem) that will not change, and an ending that changes to add different shades of nuance to the core meaning. Think of the difference between âkickâ, âkicksâ, and âkickedâ in English.
Notice that sometimes the adjective or verb stem doesnât overlap with the okurigana (Type 1). Other times, part of the stem is included in the okurigana (Type 2). The main thing to remember is, the okurigana is the Hiragana after the Kanji.
Another time you will see okurigana is with compound verbs. This is where two verbs are combined into one. In these cases, there will be okurigana both between and after Kanji characters. Examples are:
æăćșă, which means âto rememberâ
éŁăčæźă, which means âto leave food half-eatenâ
Most of the time, nouns are made up of only Kanji. However, there are some occasions where they will have okurigana. Most times, they will end in a character from the ă VSG.
This is because they actually come from verbs! Here are some examples:
ćă (from ćă)
ć„œă (from ć„œă)
ăŒăŒăŒăŒăŒăŒăŒăŒăŒăŒ
äčăć Ž (from äčă)
ç«ăĄéŁČăż (from both ç«ă€ and éŁČă)
Other times, they arenât derived from verbs, they are just simply nouns:
ćąă, which means âforce, powerâ
ćŸă, which means âbehind, rearâ
ć
šăŠ, which means âall, everythingâ
æ
ă, which means âpity, sympathyâ
æă, which means âdiagonal, slantedâ
Same Kanji, Different Okurigana
The function of okurigana is to point you in the right direction of how to pronounce a given Kanji. There would be no reason for this if each Kanji had only 1 possible reading. As it turns out, a single Kanji can have many different ways to say it. Here are some examples:
As you can see, depending on the okurigana, æ± can be read as ăăăȘ or as ăă. On the other hand, the Kanji ćș is read as ăČă in all 5 of those words! For this reason, I would recommend learning Kanji like ćș early in your studies.  It will be much easier for you to remember a Kanji with only 1 or 2 readings than a Kanji with many different readings.
Same Kanji, Same Okurigana
Itâs rare, but there are times when the okurigana unfortunately wonât tell you decisively how to pronounce the Kanji. Here is an example:
As you can see (with the help of the furigana!) BOTH the Kanji and the okurigana are the same, making them different words but homographs. If it werenât for the furigana, you might not know which reading of the kanji to use. In this situation, they both mean âto openâ but the way and the kind of opening is different. Japanese often separates very similar meanings by using different Kanji. In English, we just take it for granted that you can open your eyes and you can also open a door. In Japanese, they are two different kinds of actions, and so different Kanji are used. (It wonât matter when you speak, but when you write or type, it would be good to be aware of the difference.) In these kinds of cases, you will have to rely on either context or on furigana to know which reading is correct.
As you can see, both furigana and okurigana will help you when it comes to reading Kanji. Sometimes you will have both, other times there will only be okurigana. Later on in the Kanji section, we will take a look at other ways to help you guess a Kanjiâs reading. Until then, good luck with your Japanese journey!
And with that, you are finished with the Hiragana section. Congrats!
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