Why 弱点 (じゃくてん) have “むすめ” as the furigana?

Why 弱点 (じゃくてん) have “むすめ” as the furigana?

by KaynGiovanna

16 comments
  1. Forgotten the term for this, but it is an artistic tool to indicate additional meaning. In this case, his daughter is also his “weak point”. Aka he has a sweet spot for his daughter.

  2. sometimes in manga the kanji is like the meaning while the furigana is what they actually say out loud. so in this case it just means that someone’s daughter is thought to be the weakness

  3. This is a phenomenon often found in manga.

    So 弱点 means weakness and is usually read “jakuten”.

    However, here the person said “musume”, “daugher”. This allows the reader to follow along as fragments of a conversation can sometimes be hard to understand for others. Apparently, a person called Zamura (the furigana say Samura but I would except Zamura, but then I don’t know where this is from) has a major weakness, namely his daughter.

  4. Other comments have already answered OPs question but just wanted to chime in that I have always loved this from an artistic standpoint. Such an easy but very effective way to communicate double meaning.

  5. iirc this is a type of ateji. it replaces the original pronunciation with the furigana, while preserving the meaning of both words involved. it’s essentially a cool way to paint the daughter (むすめ) as samura’s weakness (弱点)

  6. You’ve already had your answer from other people, so I’ll just add something I often mention when this question is asked.

    I think Frieren is such a great example of this. All the spells are written as their incantation in katakana (ゾルトラーク), which is what the characters are actually pronouncing, and the furigana tells you what the spell actually does (魔族を殺す魔法).

    I think it’s really cool and it makes me so happy I can read in the original language!

  7. This is a type of 当て字 (ateji) that uses kanji for their meaning instead of their reading. You’ll see it used it a lot in song lyrics and manga. For example 青空 read as ソラ or 他人 read as ヒト.

  8. It is just an artistic choice. You find this a lot in manga. In some cases (like this one) the choice gives you the best of both words – you see the meaning of the kanji and you know the meaning of the hiragana.

    Plus in this case, the rhythm is quite nice さむらのむすめ it’s got a nice alliteration and it’s 7 syllables which is a favorite and comfortable length of a word/phrase in Japanese.

  9. It’s used when the characters have an implicit understanding of a word sometimes. They both know the 弱点 is specifically his むすめ, so its used as free real estate to remind the viewer.

  10. When writing, it allows one to explain the meaning (訓) and the sound (音).   So, imagine someone saying “samura no musume”, but with the intended meaning of “weakness”.  Usually can imagine the tone or body language to go along with it from context 

  11. I saw the title and I immediately thought of Kagurabachi. You reading it in Japanese makes me want to stop reading it in English

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