(To look up synonyms, try Japanese Synonym Finder)
How to Use
Input an arbitrary Japanese sentence, phrase or word, and this tool will show its furigana (in hiragana and/or alphabets, i.e. rōmaji) and word definitions. When you input a sentence, it will be automatically segmented into words and show their furigana/definitions separately. In this case, the result may contain some errors sometimes, which are mainly caused by erroneous identification of word boundaries. However, overall it should be mostly accurate.
Details of the Options
- “Dictionary C” (default) splits sentences into longer words/phrases than “Dictionary A” (e.g. “日本人” vs “日本” + “人”), and Dictionary B is somewhere in between. Usually, Dictionary C is better at handling idioms/new words (e.g. slang, proper nouns). If you can’t get the word definition you’re interested in using Dictionary C, try using the other ones (or try submitting the word/phrase only as an input).
- “Show word definitions/grammatical properties“: show those kinds of information as well as furigana
- “Add spaces between words”: insert spaces between word/phrase boundaries
- “Show Rōmaji”: show furigana in alphabets (Rōmaji)
- “Show furigana over kanji”: this option goes well with the rōmaji option.
Acknowledgement
Furigana and grammar information of words are extracted based on the software Sudachi (with Dictionary A, B and C denoting their corresponding dictionaries). The word definitions are retrieved from the open-sourced Japanese dictionary database JMDict and they are not constructed by myself — therefore, if you happen to find some inaccurate definitions, please report them to those who are in charge of the data. That said, I might do a bit of patchwork if the error is critical, so if you find something that should be fixed ASAP, let me know via social media or the contact page.
(As I call this website a “dictionary”, I plan to incorporate my own definitions of words, idioms and slang into this tool at some point…)
Other Tools
A useful tool for looking up synonyms of Japanese words
This (bit of a gag) tool automatically converts Japanese words into gairaigo (外来語, “loanwords”) written in katakana, and vice versa (e.g. 気さくな歌手 ↔ フレンドリーなシンガー, ハイパフォーマンス ↔ 高性能).
