Go-on

Go-on or goon (呉音; English: /ˈɡoʊ.ɒn/ GOH-on; Japanese pronunciation: [ɡo.oɴ] or [ɡoꜜoɴ], lit. "Wu sound") are an early layer of Japanese kanji readings (on'yomi), predating kan-on (漢音). Go-on was transmitted with Chinese classical and Buddhist texts and remains particularly common in Buddhist vocabulary. Both go-on and kan-on reflect Middle Chinese pronunciations, adapted to Japanese phonology.

History and uses

Go-on is the earliest of the three main historical layers of Chinese-based kanji readings, followed by kan-on and tōsō-on.

A common account traces the transmission of go-on to people from Baekje who had contact with the Wu region of southern China during the Six Dynasties. Edwin G. Pulleyblank identifies the Wu of go-on with the old southern capital of Jiankang (modern Nanjing) and its surroundings, where he suggests an older Chinese pronunciation standard was particularly persistent. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten also records a theory tracing its origins further back, through the Korean Peninsula, to Chinese pronunciations of the Han and Wei periods.

Map showing sea routes between Japan and Tang China
Routes followed by Japanese missions to Tang China, which brought kan-on readings to Japan.

Kan-on was introduced through missions to Tang China and other contacts during the Nara and early Heian periods. Go-on readings continued in use alongside it: 行 is read gyō in shugyō (修行; "Buddhist practice"), but kō in kyūkō (急行; "express train").

Compounds can also mix the two layers. In modern Japanese, for example, gengo (言語; "language") combines kan-on gen with go-on go.: 373  In a study of two historical dictionaries, Hideyuki Ohshima compared selected two-character Sino-Japanese word forms whose characters had distinct go-on and kan-on readings. Mixed readings accounted for about 15% of the forms in the 12th-century Iroha Jiruishō and about 24% in the Nippo Jisho, published in 1603–1604.: 376–380, 388 

Some historical go-on readings were lost after kan-on was introduced. Sino-Japanese character dictionaries (kanwa jiten) nevertheless supply go-on readings for their entries, including artificial readings inferred from Chinese fanqie spellings. Marc Hideo Miyake also describes a dictionary that supplied some unattested go-on and kan-on readings by analogy with homophonous characters in the historical Chinese works Guangyun and Yunjing.

Names

These readings were formerly called wa-on (和音; lit. "Japanese sound"). The name go-on is attested for this reading layer from the mid-Heian period, including in Fujiwara no Kintō's Hokuzanshō (北山抄, compiled c. 1012–1021). The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten suggests that this usage imitated a Chinese practice of contrasting southern go-on with kan-on, regarded as the correct pronunciation. It attributes the later theory of a southern Chinese origin to the association of the name with Wu.

Characteristics

Go-on distinguishes voiced and voiceless consonants that are merged in kan-on. It also has initial m- and n- where kan-on has b- and d-, respectively: 馬 ("horse") has go-on ma and kan-on ba, while 男 ("man") has nan and dan.

Readings of selected characters
Kanji Meaning Go-on Kan-on Middle Chinese transcription
明 "bright" myō mei mjaeng
京 "capital" kyō kei kjaeng
上 "up" jō shō dzyangX, dzyangH
下 "below" ge ka haeX, haeH

In the Middle Chinese transcriptions, X marks the rising tone and H the departing tone.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Nakazawa, Nobuyuki (5 February 2019). 同じ漢字なのに、日本語と中国語では発音がまったく違うのはなぜですか [Why are the pronunciations of the same kanji completely different in Japanese and Chinese?]. ことば研究館 (in Japanese). National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. Retrieved 11 August 2026.
  2. ↑ Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). The Languages of Japan. Cambridge University Press. pp. 120–121. ISBN 978-0-521-36918-3.
  3. ↑ Mineya, Tōru. 呉音. 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (in Japanese). Heibonsha. Retrieved 22 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
  4. ↑ Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1991). Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: In Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin. UBC Press. pp. 2–3. ISBN 0-7748-0366-5.
  5. 1 2 3 呉音. Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese). Shōgakukan. Retrieved 11 August 2026 – via Kotobank.
  6. 1 2 Ohshima, Hideyuki (2022). 中世における呉音漢音混読現象の展開―『色葉字類抄』と『日葡辞書』の漢語語形の比較を通じて― [The Blending of Go-on and Kan-on in Medieval Japanese: Compared with Sino-Japanese Words Found in Iroha Jiruishō and Nippo Jisho]. Mathematical Linguistics (in Japanese). 33 (6): 373–388. doi:10.24701/mathling.33.6_373.
  7. ↑ Miyake, Marc Hideo (2003). Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. Routledge. pp. 104–105. ISBN 978-1-134-40373-8.
  8. ↑ 北山抄. Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese). Shōgakukan. Retrieved 22 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
  9. ↑ 呉音. ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典 (in Japanese). Retrieved 11 August 2026 – via Kotobank.
  10. ↑ Baxter, William H.; Sagart, Laurent (20 September 2014). "Baxter–Sagart Old Chinese reconstruction, version 1.1: order by Mandarin and Middle Chinese" (PDF). pp. 56, 77, 97, 120.
  11. ↑ 明. Digital Daijisen (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 22 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
  12. ↑ 京. Digital Daijisen (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 22 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
  13. ↑ 上. Digital Daijisen (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 22 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
  14. ↑ 下. Digital Daijisen (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 22 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
  15. ↑ Baxter, William H. (1992). A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 31. ISBN 978-3-11-012324-1.