In manga, why do kanji sometimes have furigana in katakana, which doesn’t show the ‘actual’ reading?

13 comments

1. I noticed this too and thought it was interesting, putting the english pronunciations as furigana, but I always figured it was a stylization/coolness thing. I really want an answer now…

2. A lot of the time it is implying that the character is “saying” what is written in the furigana. The kanji are just there to provide context to the reader as to what they actually mean (especially if the word is some kind of gibberish katakana or something). Other times it can just be for style.

3. Maybe an example from Frieren would help:

   人を殺す魔法 is pronounced ゾルトラーク

   It’s a spell specifically created by a demon to kill humans. So the spell’s name is Zoltraak (in katakana) and the kanji/hiragana is there to almost provide an explanation of what it does. At least, that’s how I interpret it.

   It works the same way in your One Piece examples.

4. I agree with what the other user said about the kanji providing context to the reader while the furigana is what the character is really saying! It is very neat how the different alphabets can be used to say “this is what the character is actually saying but it is different from what they are saying aloud.” Can be very difficult to translate though…I play a mobile game in Japanese that does this all the time, and I found a neat explanation about it [here](https://www.tumblr.com/yuurei20/686847067958689792/eng-server-vs-jpn-server-is-treys-paint-the?source=share)!

5. in the case, the kanji is actually explain the katakana.
   not all japanese can make sense of grand line so author put kanji there for the meaning. but author want to keep pronunciation as grand line.

6. Sound vs meaning

7. These irregular readings are known as [gikun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Special_readings) (or sometimes jukujikun, but I think that’s mostly for more well-established irregular readings, like タバコ for 煙草).

   In general, the pronunciation of kanji is always contextual, and I suppose this is kind of the extreme case of that. Usually, the reading of a kanji can be gleaned just by looking at the neighboring characters, but then there are others, such as 大人, where you may need to look at the entire sentence or paragraph to be sure which pronunciation to use. With gikun, authors can introduce a reading that is specific to their work, but this necessitates the use of furigana to introduce it to new readers.

   As for the reason … I guess it’s mostly a form of artistic expression. Written and spoken language provide the creator with different tools, and the use of irregular readings is one that’s rather unique to written Japanese. Sometimes, it may just be because they want a phrase to both look and sound cool (which is probably the case with One Piece). Other times, it may be a way to make a bit of an unpronouncable joke or reference; for example, I believe that in [宇宙](#fg “そら”)よりも遠い場所 (“A place further than the universe”), the title plays with a quote from the series meaning “A place further than the sky”, while using the characters for 宇宙 to infuse it with a slightly different meaning. (I haven’t actually seen the show, though, so I’m not sure.)

8. not all japanese people would know the meaning in katana englishy, it helps them out

9. I think it all started from the beginning of kanji history in Japan. If you think about kun-yomi of Chinese characters, that’s basically the same thing.

   Also there are many vocab like that in Japanese. The written words can show more meaning thanks to the ideographic nature of kanji.

   眼鏡　めがね
   煙草　タバコ
   小鳥遊　たかなし　(a family name)

10. Ooh! I wrote a paper about this in college! This is called _ateji_, where the “natural” reading and “given” reading of the kanji don’t match up.

    Written Japanese relies on kanji to convey meaning, and because most kanji have different readings/pronunciation depending on context, there exists a “gap” between “idea” and ” pronunciation. Many manga authors use that “gap” to create new words while still conveying its intended meaning to the reader.

    To use your example, in English if you read the word “Grand Line” in the comics, you can assume it’s some sort of amazing line. If a Japanese person just saw the katakana, depending on their English level they’d probably think “it’s a line of some sort, which is… big? fancy?” But by using the _ateji_, the reader knows at a glance what the author means it is, as well as what it’s called.

    As for ワンピース, that word in everyday Japanese refers to a one-piece dress. Of course now the anime is big enough that plenty of people know of it by heart, but I imagine when it first came out, there could have been confusion at first. Without the kanji, some people may even have wondered “Why call it a _dress_ ?”

11. Oh but it does show the actual reading. 
    Unlike let’s say Chinese, japanese isn’t a kanji first language at its core.
    It’s more like the kana word comes first and then gets replaced/decorated with kanjis for a more fancy representation of meaning.
    Meaning that you can effectively read kanjis whichever way you want as long as the meaning is roughly the same.

12. authors want to use ✨️cool foreign terms✨️, but also add an explanation in japanese, so your average reader can understand. Tokyo Ghoul is a good example, as the “ghoul” part is written using the kanji for “eating” and “species”. your average japanese person wouldn’t know what a “ghoul” means otherwise

13. its also used for jokes sometimes.

    i was reading a manga where a girl snatches away the guy’s pack of cigarettes out of his hand, and he exclaims 「俺からタバコを奪って何の得になると言うんだ」　but theres furiganana over タバコ that reads 「生きがい」 because the running joke is that he’s a lowlife and all he does is smoke.