Two kinds of scripts are used in the written forms of Japanese words: morphographic kanji and phonographic kana. Whereas each kana character invariably represents a single pronunciation, the majority of kanji characters have two or more legitimate pronunciations, with one appropriate to the character in any given word. Furthermore, each kanji character has meaning while a kana character does not. On the basis of these and other differences between kanji and kana, some traditional views assume that, in reading aloud, kanji is processed by a semantic/lexical system while kana is processed by a phonological/rule system.

We review accumulating evidence from our research that argues against these traditional views.(1) In reading aloud twocharacter kanji words, normal readers are slower on lowfrequency words with statistically atypical character-sound correspondences than either high-frequency words or words with statistically typical correspondences.(2) Normal readers are easily capable of reading aloud two-character kanji nonwords.(3) Normal readers are slower on low-imageability words than high-imageability words, but the imageability effect emerges only for low-familiarity kanji words with atypical character-sound correspondences.(4) Although Japanese surface dyslexia has been described as a selective reading disorder on kanji words, recently reported cases reveal good kanji performance for high-frequency words and words with statistically typical correspondences, despite a profound deficit on low-frequency words with atypical character-sound correspondences.