The “science” of Kanji, part 2: readings

This is part 2 of a series on how Kanji work in Japanese, again, based on my experiences so far. You can read part one here. The last post covered radicals, while this one will cover readings of Kanji.

The key to understanding how to read kanji is knowing that there are two different ways to read a given Kanji. To understand why there are two ways, let’s look at history a bit. Kanji are Chinese Characters, in that they are natively used in China. As Japan, Korea, and Vietnam came into contact with China, they absorbed a lot of the culture and philosophy. So Confucian thought has a strong influence on all of the culture above for example, but also they borrowed lots of Chinese words and writing.

Japan already has a language of its own. In fact Korean, Okinawan and Japanese language belong to a language family entirely different from Chinese. There’s no relation whatsoever, but since they didn’t have a writing system of their own, they retrofitted Chinese Characters to describe words in their native languages. At the same time, if they borrowed a word from China, they just borrowed the word and gave it a more native-sounding pronunciation.

So the result is that Chinese characters can be used to describe native words, or they’re used to describe compound words originally imported from China.

Take a classic example, 車, which means cart, vehicle, car, etc. If you read it the “native” Japanese way, called the kun yomi reading, it can be read as kuruma. But the Chinese-style reading, or on yumi reading is sha. So, depending on the context, either you read this as sha or as kuruma.

As a general rule of thumb (but by no means definitive):

• Stand-alone words use kun yomi
• Place names in Japan often, though not always, use kun yomi
• Surnames often use kun yomi
• Many, many compound words use on yomi
• Buddhist sutra chanting uses on yomi almost exclusively²
• Shinto liturgy and prayer uses kun yomi almost exclusively³

So, when I am talking about my car, I would call it kuruma, but if used in a compound word like nihonsha (日本車, Japanese car), or sensha (戦車, tank) you can see the Chinese-style on-yomi is used instead.

That’s a relatively easy example. What about something trickier like 便 which has a native Japanese reading, たより (tayori), but has two Chinese-style readings, ビン (bin), ベン (ben)? ¹ This is a common example where a kanji can have multiple Chinese-style and/or Japanese-style readings. So, in a compound word, you could see either 不便 fuben (inconvenient) or 便箋 binsen (stationary). There’s no hard-fast rule which Chinese-style reading would be used for which word. As you come across new words that use this, they could go either way.

Generally though, usually kanji don’t have a lot of Chinese-style readings, so at most you’d have to memorize two, maybe three for a character.

Another dimension to this is that kanji can also be used in verbs, and often are. An extreme example is 下 and 上. These two words have many, many ways to read them, both Chinese-style and Japanese-style.

Let’s take 下 for example and just look at Japanese-style kun-yomi:

• shita – 下 – down
• shimo – 下 – down, bottom, lower
• sagaru – 下がる – to be hung down, lowered
• sageru – 下げる – to hang something down
• oriru – 下りる – to descend, go down stairs
• orosu – 下ろす – to lower something (e.g. hands)

These are all verbs and nouns that come from using this one kanji. It’s an extreme example, but it gives you an idea how many different ways there are to read the Japanese-style reading. You’re not expected to memorize all the different readings of 下. Instead, as you learn new vocabularly, you can see how it gets used in so many different ways.

So how do you remember so many different readings for so many different kanji? I think this is the question Japanese-language students want to ask most and I think there’s two different things you have to do at the same time:

1. Invest the time to study kanji. Kanji flashcards, especially professional ones, are highly recommended, but they provide accurate information, and require less time to setup. But you can’t just force your way through and memorize them. Instead, you have to develop “flight time” by visually exposing yourself to that kanji over and over again over the long-term. If you see a kanji 10 times, you start to remember it. If you see it 50 times, you get pretty comfortable. If you see it 200 times, it becomes rote.
2. The above helps, but is not enough by itself, because you can’t construct most words from single kanji. So the other half of this approach is to just learn vocabulary words, and keep learning new words. I believe that much of kanji learning happens by reverse-engineering words you learn, figuring out the kanji they contain. For example, if you learn two totally different words, but they have a common kanji, you can start to figure out that this kanji is read such-and-such way. For example, take words like 消去 (shōkyo to purge, erase) and 消毒 (shōdoku to disinfect). If you never encountered 消 before, you can already figure out that the Chinese-style reading is shō and it has the context of erasing, purging, etc. If you encounter a third word like 消費 and can begin to guess how its read and its meant. The word is shōhi or “consumption” since it “erases” expenditures (the second kanji).

These are just some suggestions. If you do both at the same time, you’ll find one compliments the other, but always try to keep your study of Japanese balanced, not lop-sided, or you will continue to struggle. Good luck!

¹ Notice that for native-Japanese readings, it’s spelled with hiragana, while with Chinese-style readings, with katakana since they’re technically “foreign” words.

² The Chinese Buddhist canon is a very, very extensive set of Buddhist texts used throughout East Asia, and were imported into Japan as the Taisho Tripitaka. Japanese readings of texts maintain the Chinese-style reading as much as possible, hence, the use of on-yomi when doing Buddhist chanting.

³ Shinto is a native Japanese religion, and much of the vocabulary existed in some form before the importation of Chinese culture. Hence the native kun-yomi. In Shinto chanting, if they recite the “sacred numbers”, these are just the numbers 1 through 10, 100, 1000 and 10000 recited in native Japanese pronunciation: hito, futa, mi, yon, i … hyaku, chi, yorozu. This was from the book The Essence of Shinto: Japan’s Spiritual Heart.