Places, Images, Times & Transformations

Japanese Writing System II

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Ateji

One interesting phenomenon that began to occur during Kamakura and Muromachi eras (1185-1568) was ateji. The term ateji refers to a practice of writing Japanese in kanji disregarding their meanings of the characters altogether. Ateji therefore is a bit like man'yōgana, except that in the case of ateji two or more morae are typically associated with a kanji. Early examples include asamashi 'shameful' 浅増,, aramashi 'will not probably be' 荒猿, itohoshi 'lovely' 糸惜, hakanashi 'short-lived' 無墓, mutukashi 'difficult' 六借.
Take the first compound asamashi, for instance. Here the characters 浅 'shallow' and 増 'increase' each has the kun reading asa and mashi. (Recall that in man'yōgana the sounds borrowed were Chinese, or the on reading.) The sounds of these characters add up to asamashi, but not the meaning; that is, 'shallow' plus 'increase' does not make 'shameful.' Naturally ateji are not Chinese compounds; if they happen to represent Chinese, their meanings will be totally different from Japanese. Such liberal use of kanji was practiced even more rampantly in the print culture through the Edo period (1603-1868) and later, when a large number of printed books came to be published to satisfy people's needs in an increasingly consumer oriented, urban society.

Today, although the use of ateji is well and alive, it is a usage practice to be avoided, at least according to the educators of the language. I will come back to this issue a little later, in discussing the relationship between jukujikun and ateji.

Furigana

Furigana refers to the practice of writing, in hiragana or katakana, the pronunciation of a kanji next to the kanji. In some texts, the on reading for a Chinese compound is written on the right side in katakana. The meaning (that is, the kun reading) of the compound in Japanese was written on the left side of the compound. This enabled those with limited knowledge of Chinese compounds could still understand the texts by referring to the kun reading, which represented its meaning in Japanese. Here are some examples.

膂力 リョウリョク ちから power, strength
皇子 ワウジ みこ prince
嘆賞 タンセウ をどろきほめる praise
賞賛 ショウサン ほめる praise
討論 トウロン はなしあふ discuss
慚愧 ザンギ はずる shame
晦曚 クヮイモウ まつくら total darkness
靂霹 ヘキレキ いかづち thunder
飛禽 ヒキン とり bird
廊下 ロウカ ほそどの corridor
脚半 アユヒ きゃはん leggings
猟夫 サツヲ かりびと hunter

Furigana practice in which both the on and kun readings are indicated as above is now rare, but the use of furignana as a pronunciation aid is still commonly used today. In contemporary usage, furigana is added to the right side of a compound when the text is written vertically to show its pronunciation (usually in hiragana if the pronunciation is kun, katakana if on). Furigana is given right above the compound if the text is oriented horizontally.

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