Question 1

What is furigana and why is it useful?

Accepted Answer

Furigana is a small hiragana (or sometimes katakana) reading printed above or beside a kanji character to show how it is pronounced. It is the standard way to make Japanese text accessible to learners, children, or anyone who has not yet memorized a specific kanji reading. Adding furigana lets you read real Japanese sentences that contain kanji without guessing pronunciations — you see the kana above each character and can still learn the kanji shape at the same time.

Question 2

How do I add furigana to kanji automatically?

Accepted Answer

Paste any Japanese sentence into the input field and click Generate. The tool analyses the text, identifies the kanji tokens, and returns either HTML ruby markup (with each reading correctly paired to its kanji) or a plain text version with the readings in parentheses. You do not need to install anything, make an account, or pre-process the sentence — just paste and generate.

Question 3

What is the difference between ruby output and plain reading text?

Accepted Answer

Ruby output returns HTML with ... markup so the reading appears directly above the kanji when rendered in a browser, e-reader, or word processor. Plain reading text returns the sentence with furigana shown inline, either in parentheses or as a separate annotated line. Pick ruby when you need something you can paste into a website, Word document, or reading tool. Pick plain text when you want to copy the readings into flashcards, Anki, or a notes app that does not support ruby markup.

Question 4

Why does the generator sometimes show partial output?

Accepted Answer

The generator relies on a bundled Japanese morphological analyser and dictionary. If a word is rare, newly coined, or uses an unusual kanji compound that is not in the dictionary, the tool marks those tokens honestly instead of guessing. You will still get readings for every kanji the tool recognises, and the unrecognised tokens are passed through unchanged so you can manually fill them in. Edit the input slightly (for example, add spaces around an unrecognised word) and the analyser often picks up the correct segmentation on the next run.

Question 5

Does the furigana generator work on mobile and without an internet connection?

Accepted Answer

The page itself is fully responsive and works on phones, tablets, and desktop browsers. Furigana generation currently runs through a server endpoint, so you need an internet connection for the actual analysis step. Once the reading is generated you can copy or paste it anywhere — including offline reading apps, e-readers, or printed study sheets — and the ruby markup continues to render without any further network call.

Furigana Generator

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