Kanji to hiragana converter

How it works

1. Paste or type Japanese text. The first time, the Japanese dictionary (about 18 MB) loads once.
2. Every kanji is replaced by its reading in hiragana. For katakana instead, choose “Everything in katakana”.
3. If a word comes out with the wrong reading, write it as ｜漢字《よみ》 in the input and that reading is used.
4. Copy the result.

Frequently asked questions

Why would I want everything in hiragana?

For a learner who reads kana but not yet the kanji, for a child, or for a script someone has to read aloud. Japanese is normally written with kanji, so for anything else furigana over the kanji is easier to read than a page of kana — the Furigana generator is the same tool with the kanji kept.

How accurate are the readings?

They come from a morphological analyser, kuromoji with the IPADIC dictionary. Against 5,000 sentences whose readings were checked by hand (the JSUT corpus), about four sentences in five without numbers came out entirely right, and about 1.7 % of kana were wrong. The mistakes are words with more than one reading — 開いた is あいた or ひらいた depending on what opened — and the names of people and places. Read it through before you rely on it, especially for study.

Can I fix a wrong reading?

Write it in the input as ｜東京《とうけい》: what stands between the bar and 《 is the text, what is inside 《》 is its reading, and that reading is used as it is. When the text is all kanji the bar can be left out (東京《とうけい》). It is the notation of Aozora Bunko and the Japanese novel sites, so it can stay in a manuscript.

Does katakana turn into hiragana too?

No. Only kanji change; katakana, numbers, Latin letters and punctuation stay as they are. For the katakana as well, put the result through Hiragana ⇄ katakana.

Is my text uploaded?

No. The dictionary is loaded into your browser once and every reading is worked out on your own device. After the first load it also works offline.