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Convert kanji to hiragana and add furigana

Add hiragana or katakana readings to kanji, as plain kana, 漢字(かんじ) or HTML ruby, with every reading editable; the dictionary runs in your browser.

Format
Readings in

0 characters

Furigana
The readings appear here.
Runs in your browser · no uploadHow it works

How to use Kanji to hiragana (furigana)

  1. 1

    Paste the text with kanji

    Paste a worksheet, a notice or a name; press Read the kanji the first time to download the dictionary.

  2. 2

    Choose the output

    Pick kana only, 漢字(かな) or HTML ruby, and whether the readings are in hiragana or katakana.

  3. 3

    Fix any reading

    Check the list of kanji words below the result and tap or type the right reading where one is wrong.

  4. 4

    Copy or save

    Copy the result, or save it as a text file or, for ruby, as an HTML page that shows the furigana.

Limits and Pro

Free with no sign-up; up to 50,000 characters are read at a time, and the dictionary is a single 17.8 MB download.

Pro hides the ads; there is nothing else to unlock. See Pro

About Kanji to hiragana (furigana)

Furigana are the small kana printed beside or above kanji to show how they are read. Teachers put them on worksheets, parents on picture books and notices for children, translators on scripts for voice actors, and anyone filling in a form with a フリガナ line needs the katakana reading of a name. This page reads the kanji in your text with an open-source dictionary and gives you the readings in the form you need.

Kana only rewrites the text with every kanji replaced by its reading: in hiragana the katakana words stay as they are (コーヒーをのむ), and in katakana the whole line becomes katakana, the way a フリガナ field wants it (ヤマダ タロウ). 漢字(かな) puts the reading in brackets after each kanji, which survives any plain-text box, e-mail or chat. HTML ruby produces <ruby> markup that browsers draw as real furigana above the line, ready for a web page or an e-book.

Readings follow the word, not the single character: 東京 gets one reading, とうきょう, over both kanji, while okurigana are left bare, so 食べる becomes 食(た)べる. A word whose reading the dictionary isn't sure about can be corrected: each kanji word is listed with its reading and the other readings the dictionary has, and your choice is used everywhere the word appears.

The dictionary is general Japanese, so rare names, place names and specialist terms may need a fix by hand, and it does not choose between readings that depend on meaning, such as 今日 read こんにち in 今日の日本.

Privacy

The kanji are read by the kuromoji dictionary in a background worker inside this page, so the text you paste never leaves your device. The 17.8 MB dictionary is fetched once from the jsDelivr CDN and then kept in the browser's cache storage. Your text and any readings you correct are stored only in this browser.

Features

Three furigana formats

Plain kana, readings in brackets or HTML <ruby> with fallback brackets for old readers.

Hiragana or katakana

Hiragana for children's texts, or katakana for the フリガナ line of a form.

Your readings win

Change a reading once and every place the word appears follows.

Kanji to hiragana (furigana): frequently asked questions

What is the difference between ふりがな and フリガナ?
Both mean the reading of kanji, written in hiragana or katakana. Forms that print ふりがな in hiragana usually want the reading in hiragana, and forms that print フリガナ in katakana want it in katakana. Banks, city halls and employers often ask for the katakana version of a name, so pick Katakana and Kana only for those fields.
How do I put furigana into Word or Google Docs?
Word has its own Phonetic Guide (ルビ) under Home, which needs the reading for each word; copy it from the 漢字(かな) result. Google Docs has no ruby feature, so readings in brackets are the practical choice there. For web pages, e-books and blogs, the HTML ruby output pastes straight into the source and shows real furigana above the kanji.
Why is one reading spread over two or more kanji?
Most kanji words are read as a whole, and the reading can't always be split between the characters: 今日 is きょう, and neither kanji alone is read き or ょう. So the reading sits over the whole word, the way dictionaries and textbooks print it. Kana written in the word, such as the べる of 食べる, are left without furigana.
Can it read names and place names correctly?
It knows many common surnames, given names and places, but names have readings no dictionary can predict: 東 can be ひがし, あずま or とう. Each kanji word is listed under the result with the reading chosen and the alternatives the dictionary knows. Tap one or type your own, and the furigana updates everywhere that word appears.
Does the HTML ruby output work in every browser?
Yes. All current browsers draw <ruby> with the reading above the kanji, on phones and computers. The output also includes <rp> brackets, so a reader or app that can't draw ruby shows 漢字(かんじ) instead of running the reading into the text. Line breaks become <br> tags, and the saved HTML file opens directly in a browser.

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