Wasei kango

Wasei-kango (Japanese: 和製漢語^?, "Japanese-made Chinese words") refers to words in the Japanese language composed of Chinese morphemes but invented in Japan rather than borrowed from China. Such terms are generally written using kanji and read according to the on'yomi pronunciations of the characters. While many words belong to the shared Sino-Japanese vocabulary, some kango do not exist in Chinese while others have a substantially different meaning from Chinese.

During the Meiji Restoration, Japanese words were invented en masse to represent western concepts such as revolution (, kakumei) or democracy (, minshu). Towards the end of the 19th century, many of these terms were re-imported into Chinese. As the form of the words entirely resembles that of native Chinese words in most cases, Chinese speakers often fail to recognize that they were actually coined in Japan.

Since antiquity, the Japanese have supplemented their native vocabulary, known as yamato kotoba, by borrowing many words from Chinese. After integrating the Chinese words into their vocabulary, they began creating their own kango.

One source of wasei-kango is the reinterpretation of yamato kotoba via on'yomi readings of the characters as opposed to the original kun'yomi. For example, the archaic word for Japan, 日の本 (ひのもと), has become the modern 日本 (にほん or にっぽん). Another example is the word for daikon, 大根, which changed from おおね to だいこん. Sometimes, an inversion of the character order is necessary, as in the construction of 立腹 (りっぷく) from 腹が立つ (はらがたつ), for anger. Terms have also been coined for concepts in Japanese culture such as geisha (芸者), ninja (忍者), or kaishaku (介錯).

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