Furigana

Example of writing furigan with ruby characters on a poster aimed at young students.

Furigana (振り仮名 , ''Furigana''^?) is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of kana, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. It is used to clarify non-standard or ambiguous reading words to children or in student study materials. But it is also used in many public and private documents, especially to clarify the kanjis corresponding to people's names, and in these documents there is a row at the top to place the text in furigana. The furigana script is made up of kana characters (hiragana or katakana), which in the Japanese ruby script, is small in size and can be placed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. More often the furigana is written in hiragana, although the katakana is used in certain special cases.

Etymology

The term furigana is formed by the verb furu (to add, attach) and (kana>) gana (hiragana or katakana syllabic writing).

Use

• In vertical writing they are placed to the right of character.
• In horizontal writing they are located above the character.

They are used in the following cases:

• In books written for children who do not master the reading kanjias well as on some sleeves. In the latter, the furigan can also be used as an expressive resource, to indicate what a character thinks or really means.
• In characters that are not on the list of 2136 kanjis common use or Jōyō kanji.
• In some cases where it occurs katakana a reading in another language (mainly English or Chinese), and kanji to represent their meaning.