LLearn Japanese

Is there a reason for using different versions of the same kanji? Eg 闘う v. 戦う

I was reading through the lyrics of YOASOBI’s 祝福 and noticed that they used 闘う for “to fight.” However said kanji is typically written as 戦う iirc. When an author/writer chooses to use a different kanji for a word than what’s typical, is there a specific intent behind it? If so, what is usually the intention? Is it something like how different diction in English can give different impressions?

5 comments

  1. There’s a big vast wide grey zone between “totally different meaning intended” and “no clear difference, just artistic funtimes,” and different cases can fall anywhere along that spectrum (though there’s basically never *zero* effect on meaning). It’s something that’s basically only possible in Japanese because of the strange nature of kun’yomi–spoken words just have an unusually loose bond to how they’re written, allowing this type of play. To put it very crudely, the result is that the word gets the meanings both of how it sounds and of how it’s written. A pretty common one is to say とき but write 時代–the result is basically “時 in the sense of 時代,” if that make sense.

  3. They usuallyvary ever so slightly…. (I will use different kanji as other people already explained the ones in the title)

    For example,

    聞く and 聴くand 訊く

    聴く is used for when you are listening to music…and 聞く is used more for hearing in general….and 訊く is mainly used for asking a question….an inquiry

  4. When it comes to song lyrics, variant kanji are usually used as a stylistic choice (thus making the lyrics more memorable). Another common practice is using kanji to replace a katakana word (with furigana attatched so you know how it’s read)

  5. There are entire books written for natives on this subject, which tells you that there is a large degree of Grammar Nazi thing to this, but there are distinctions.

    There are last time I counted ten ways to write Miru, including just hiragana. It would be strange to say you 看る’d TV, but you can 見る, or 視る, or 観る it and maybe even 覽る it (on certain occasions).

    I’d like to say you cannot really 診る it either, but I am sure there is a Kanji joke possible in the age of cord cutting.

    One interesting thing to note is the frequency with which kanji compounds end up being made up of supposedly distinguishable Kanji. And of course now that I say this, my mind goes blank and none come to mind.

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