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Concept

Ateji

In modern Japanese, ateji principally refers 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 its 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 Ateji as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of katakana (see also Transcription into Japanese), although many ateji coined in earlier eras still linger on.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, "tempura" may be written as '天麩羅'. The Japanese loanword for "coffee" is generally written using the katakana 'コーヒー', but on coffee shop signs and menus it may be written with the Chinese word "珈琲", which is then pronounced irregularly to their normal Japanese reading (their kun'yomi). Many characters have gained meanings derived from ateji usage. For example, ateji were once widely utilized for foreign place names; such as in the ateji "ajia" 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", even though '亜' originally meant "subsequent" (and continues to). From the ateji "Amerika", the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage "Beikoku", which literally translates to "rice country" but means "United States of America"; however, "アメリカ" remains in far more common use in modern Japanese.

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Related concepts (6)
Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana.
Man'yōgana
is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with man'yōgana.
Kanbun
A Kanbun is a form of Classical Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period to the mid-20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. As a result, Sino-Japanese vocabulary makes up a large portion of the Japanese lexicon and much classical Chinese literature is accessible to Japanese readers in some resemblance of the original. The corresponding system in Korean is gugyeol (口訣/구결).
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