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In Japanese, are there any words/kanji that are written in dictionarys but
actually don't exist at all? Like the "Ghost word" in English.
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2023-04-28T20:10:26.967
99469
2023-04-29T06:38:57.410
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question
words kanji etymology
Ghost word and Ghost Kanji in Japanese
One set of these which is quite well-known are the
[幽霊文字{ゆうれいもじ}](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97#:%7E:text=%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97%EF%BC%88%E3%82%86%E3%81%86%E3%82%8C%E3%81%84%E3%82%82%E3%81%98,%E3%82%86%E3%81%86%E3%82%8C%E3%81%84%E3%81%98%EF%BC%89%E3%81%A8%E3%82%82%E5%91%BC%E3%81%B6%E3%80%82),
which were encoded in JIS and from there into Unicode.

As the Wikipedia article shows, JIS purportedly created the character set by
gathering characters from four character dictionaries. However, some of the
characters that ended up being encoded cannot actually be found in those
dictionaries. These may be thought of as fabrications (although in a different
way to "ghost words" in English like
'[dord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord)', which arose from
misunderstandings).

For example, one of these, 妛, contains an extra horizontal stroke in the
middle which was thought to have arisen when a photocopy was made where two
pieces of paper with the individual character parts were joined together,
intending to form the character . Some so-called 幽霊文字 were later found to be
true rare characters used in person or place names. But due to their obscure
origins, there is not a firm consensus on where others of these characters
really came from.
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2023-04-28T20:40:12.673
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2023-04-29T04:57:40.510
2023-04-29T04:57:40.510
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answer
The Wikipedia article for "[Ghost
Words](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_word)" has the following entry:

> The Japanese word kusege (癖毛, compounding kuse 癖 "habit; vice" and 毛 ke
> "hair", "frizzy hair") was mistranslated as "vicious hair" in the
> authoritative Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary from the first
> edition (1918) to the fourth (1974), and corrected in the fifth edition
> (2003) "twisted [kinky, frizzy] hair; hair that stands up". This phantom
> word was not merely an unnoticed lexicographical error, generations of
> dictionary users copied the mistake. For example, a Tokyo hospital of
> cosmetic surgery had a long-running display advertisement in the Asian
> edition of Newsweek that read, "Kinky or vicious hair may be changed to a
> lovely, glossy hair" [sic]. This hair-straightening ad was jokingly used in
> the "Kinky Vicious" title of a 2011 Hong Kong iPhoneography photo
> exhibition.

Also below that entry is an entry for [Ghost
Kanji](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Ghost_kanji) (幽霊文字) which is
better explained in @jogloran's answer.
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2023-04-29T06:38:57.410
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2023-04-29T06:38:57.410
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answer