ateji

thumb| form of as , using the form of (, "trash"), which literally translates as "protect beauty" In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.

For example, the word "sushi" is often written with its . Though the two characters have the readings and respectively, the character means "one's natural life span" and means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of , although many coined in earlier eras still linger on.