When to Stop Using Furigana

The Jōyō kanji list (常用漢字表), issued by the Japanese Cabinet on November 30, 2010, contains 2,136 characters. It is described as a guide to kanji use when writing modern Japanese in everyday public life. Books for adults usually do not print readings over kanji in that range. Furigana appears in books for children, or over rare characters and unusual readings.

So if you keep reading in Japanese, sooner or later you will meet text without furigana. This post is about when and how to let it go.

Is leaning on furigana a problem?

I’ll say what I think first. I don’t think relying on furigana is a bad thing in itself.

Japanese children’s books put furigana over almost every kanji. Children read the kana, and over time they learn which readings go with which characters. It is natural for a learner to take the same road. I believe finishing a book with the help of furigana teaches you more than stopping at every character you can’t read and losing the story.

The catch is that with furigana on the page, your eyes drift to the kana. If you read only the kana and never look at the shape of the kanji, you can read many books and still be stuck on the same words when the furigana is gone. What to watch is not relying on it, but relying on it the same way for too long.

Test whether you are ready

As a guide, I would rather you try reading without it once than go by your JLPT level or the number of books you have read. Here is a simple way.

Take a chapter you have already read and read it again with furigana off. Use a chapter you know, not a new one. You won’t get lost in the plot, so you can count just the words you can’t read.

If you hit one or two words a page, and they are mostly names of people and places or rare characters, I think you no longer need furigana for that kind of book. If unreadable words keep coming and you lose track of what the sentences mean, it is still too early. Even then, the words that stopped you are a useful list. They are the next words to learn.

One book at a time, not all at once

I suggest dropping furigana gradually. By gradually I don’t mean picking individual words. I mean deciding by the work you read and by how many times you read it.

Turn it off on the second reading. Read a story once with furigana and once without. Because you already understand it, the second reading is all about linking the shape of each kanji to its sound. With a short story, reading it twice is not much of a burden.

Turn it off for easier works first. Whether you can manage without it depends on the book. Start with an author you have read a few times, or a story you already know. When you move to a new author, or a work with older language, it is fine to turn furigana back on.

Move to editions with less furigana. On Aozora Bunko, the furigana comes from the printed edition the text was typed from. Editions for children have readings over almost every kanji, while editions for adults mark only the hard ones. Reading an adult edition is already like reading with half the furigana removed.

There is nothing to be embarrassed about in going back. If a chapter doesn’t work without furigana, turn it back on and read it that way.

After it is off, check readings

The real risk of reading without furigana is leaving a reading you don’t know as a guess. If you make up a reading and keep going, the wrong one can stick. I think it is best to check it on the spot.

With a paper book, that means looking the character up in a kanji dictionary by radical or stroke count. It takes time, but it stays with you. In an e-reader or reading app, selecting the word and opening the dictionary is the fastest way.

One warning. When furigana assigns a special reading, the dictionary may give you a different one. In Natsume Sōseki’s work, 判然 is glossed はっきり in places, while the dictionary reads it はんぜん. If the dictionary’s reading doesn’t fit the sentence, turn furigana back on and see how the edition wants it read. I wrote more about Sōseki’s spellings in Reading Natsume Sōseki as a Japanese Learner.

Dropping furigana in Niho

I make Niho, a free reader for iPhone and iPad that holds the Aozora Bunko catalogue of more than 17,000 works.

Niho shows furigana only where the source edition has ruby. It never adds readings on its own. Tap the Aa button in the reader to open Reading settings, and you will find a Show furigana switch. The same switch is on the Settings screen. The setting applies to every book and to all three views, Pages, Scroll and Chat. You can’t hide furigana word by word, so you switch it by book or by reading, as described above.

When you meet a word you can’t read with furigana off, long-press to select it and tap Look up. The dictionary sheet shows the word with its reading in kana. The speaker button reads the word aloud with your device’s Japanese voice. If you want to see how the edition reads it, turn furigana on for a moment from Aa and it appears right there.

Words you look up are saved to your Word Book with the sentence you met them in. The Reading question type in the Quiz asks you to type the reading of a kanji word in kana. Practising the words that stopped you there means you won’t stop at them next time. The interface is available in 16 languages, including English.

Niho shows text horizontally only, not vertically. Daily tips are in Tips for Reading Japanese Books with Niho, and Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.