One thing about the Japanese written language is that there’s a strange “duality” present, with many words having two valid ways to read them, which usually results in us poor gaijin embarrassing ourselves by using the wrong one. One reason for this is that kanji usually have two pronunciations, a Chinese reading (imported from China two thousand years ago) and a Japanese one. Fundamentally, the Japanese reading is used for simpler words written with single characters like 水 mizu (water), 空 sora (sky), or 人 hito (person), while the Chinese reading is used for more complex compound words like 水圧 suiatsu (water pressure), 空間 kuukan (a vacuum) and 人権 jinken (human rights). While this part is frankly not hard to master, the names of people are more complex, and family names like Miyagi or Yanai could be read as Miyashiro or Yauchi just as well — the only way to know for sure is ask the person how their name is pronounced. I’m watching the currently-running anime Love, Elections and Chocolate, about love, elections and chocolate, and it features a main character named Ojima who’s angry because everyone thinks his last name is Oshima, a perfectly valid alternate way to read the name.
Love, Elections, Chocolate and kanji.
