Furigana — the device that makes kana enough

The small print beside kanji

Open a Japanese book and you will often find very small hiragana above a kanji (in horizontal text) or to its right (in vertical text). These are furigana, also called ruby.

They give the reading. Japanese kanji usually have several possible readings — on and kun — so even native speakers can be stuck on an unfamiliar word.

For a learner the implication is large: with only the 46 kana, anything that carries furigana is something you can pronounce, whether or not you know what it means.

Where you will find them

• Children’s books and school texts — on every kanji above the reader’s grade level.
• Shōnen manga — on nearly all kanji. This is why manga is such a common on-ramp.
• Newspapers and general books — selectively, on names, places and rare words.
• Official notices — sometimes, when written with children or foreign residents in mind.

Manga also uses furigana creatively, printing a different word than the kanji says — マジ (maji, "seriously") over 本気 (honki, "in earnest") — to deliver both at once.

What finishing kana unlocks

Once you can read all 46 kana out of order, every furigana-annotated text becomes pronounceable, even if the meaning is not there yet.

That matters more than it sounds. Being able to say a word lets you look it up, lets you connect what you hear to what you see, and — not least — makes it feel like you are reading Japanese.

This is why manga and lower-grade readers are the usual next step after kana. You can make progress without knowing kanji.

It is easier digitally

The web has a standard for this: the HTML ruby element. When kana appear above kanji on a Japanese site, that is what is doing it.

There are browser extensions that inject furigana into any Japanese page. At the beginner stage they help.

The catch is that leaning on them means you stop looking at the kanji. Once reading feels steadier, start turning them off.