furigana

are a Japanese reading aid. They consist of smaller kana printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. In horizontal text, yokogaki, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, tategaki, they are placed to the right of the line of text, as illustrated below. They are one type of ruby text. Furigana are also known as yomigana (読み仮名) or rubi (ルビ) in Japanese.
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<human language, Japanese> (Or "rubi") Small hiragana, written above kanji (and these days sometimes above Latin characters) as a phonetic comment and reading aid. The singular and plural are both "furigana".
(2000-12-30)