Ateji

In modern Japanese, ateji (当て字, 宛字 or あてじ^?, "called upon characters") principally refer to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to man'yōgana in Old Japanese. Conversely ateji also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.

For example, the word sushi is often written with the ateji 寿司. Though the two characters have the readings su and shi respectively, the character 寿 means "one's natural life span" and 司 means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. Ateji as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of katakana (see also Transcription into Japanese), although many ateji coined in earlier eras still linger on.

Ateji today are used conventionally for certain words, such as 寿司 (sushi), though these words may be written in hiragana (especially for native words), or katakana (especially for borrowed words), with preference depending on the particular word, context, and choice of the writer. Ateji are particularly common on traditional store signs and menus. For example, kōhī, the Japanese loanword for "coffee", is generally written using the katakana コーヒー, but on coffee shop signs and menus, it is often written with the ateji 珈琲.

Many characters have gained meanings derived from ateji usage. For example, ateji was once widely utilized for foreign place names; such as in the ateji ajia (亜細亜^?) used to write "Asia". The original ateji word is now considered archaic, but the character 亜 has gained the meaning "Asia" in such compounds as tōa (東亜^?, East Asia), even though 亜 originally meant "subsequent" (and continues to). From the ateji amerika (亜米利加^?, America), the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage beikoku (米国^?), which literally translates to "rice country" but means "United States of America".

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