I recently finished the anime series Inuyasha, along with the four films. I
noticed while looking at the [Wikipedia
entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuyasha_the_Movie:_Affections_Touching_Across_Time)
for the first film—映画犬夜叉 時代を越える想い—that the romanization is written "Eiga
Inuyasha: Toki o Koeru Omoi". This seemed odd to me; considering I recognize
the word 時代, which is normally read as じだい and I have never seen a reference
to it being pronounced とき.

So I thought this must be a typo. But after looking at the [Japanese Wikipedia
entry](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%8A%AC%E5%A4%9C%E5%8F%89_\(%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB\)#%E7%8A%AC%E5%A4%9C%E5%8F%89_%E6%99%82%E4%BB%A3%E3%82%92%E8%B6%8A%E3%81%88%E3%82%8B%E6%83%B3%E3%81%84),
and a closer inspection of the [cover
art](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cE8Gr.jpg), I realized it is not. The Wikipedia
entry writes the hiragana as いぬやしゃ ときをこえるおもい, and (although difficult to see)
it is right there in the cover art. The furigana under 時代 is written as とき.

[![映画犬夜叉　時代を越える想い　Cover
Art](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cE8Grl.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cE8Grl.jpg)

Is this a common homograph for 時代? Does it alter the meaning of the word?
Tough similar, the definition of 時代 is usually _era_ or _time period_ , where
as とき（時）is specifically _time_.
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2020-03-16T18:21:22.897
75043
2021-07-21T00:36:00.167
2021-07-21T00:36:00.167
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question
meaning kanji creative-furigana
時代 Homograph, Written as とき
It's basically a stylized way of using kanji. It's fairly common in manga and
songs to substitute the standard reading for something else in furigana. It's
a way of adding extra meaning to the 'main' phrase in kanji.

There is actually quite a bit of flexibility available to writers when using
this particular artifice. You can play around with it and do stuff like this:

> 海江田｛ヤツ｝ Umieda (the idiot)  
>  タンクを排水｛ブロー｝できないようです。 We can't seem to blow the tanks.

I've seen cases where the ruby script is actually in kanji or romaji too.
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2020-03-16T21:55:42.003
75045
2020-03-16T21:55:42.003
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75043
answer