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こんにちは！

I am currently learning the Japanese language (along with the Russian
language) outside of schooling, and decided that besides reading raw text for
practice I could use manga as well. However, I was quite confused when I began
reading my favorite series 'One Piece'.  
I noticed that while I could not read most of the kanji (along with most
katakana), pieces were written in hiragana to the side (which is apparently
called furigana). However, furigana only appears to be besides kanji and not
most katakana (despite it ["consisting of smaller
kana"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furigana)). ![Image depicting scenario
listed above](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tl5QA.gif) Can someone explain the
exact usage of furigana (why it is sometimes used in rather mature series
too), and what the section without furigana says.

ありがとう!
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2015-04-07T22:55:00.947
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usage furigana
Exact use of furigana?
_Hiragana_ and _katakana_ are both phonetic (sound-based) writing systems.
_Furigana_ is used to show the phonetic reading of a _kanji_ (or sometimes
even [Latin
lettering](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/JR_Namba_entrance.jpg)).

It is not used with _katakana_ because _katakana_ is already phonetic, so its
pronunciation is unambiguous. For example, my name (Eric), in _katakana_ ,
would be エリック. You could express this phonetically equivalently in _hiragana_
as えりっく. The _katakana_ in your example would be phonetically equivalent to
しゅがあ. I would recommend [reading about the Japanese writing system to learn
about _katakana_ and
_hiragana_](http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/writing).

On the other hand, _kanji_ are very difficult by comparison. Students learn
around 2,000 _kanji_ over the course of many, many years, while _hiragana_ and
_katakana_ take essentially no longer than first year. So, if the _kanji_ is a
very high grade level, the person may not know it at all, but may know the
word that it represents if they know the sound of it.

_Kanji_ also often have different readings. Notably, they usually have a
Chinese reading and a Japanese reading, but they can have multiple of these as
well. Take [食](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A3%9F#Japanese) for example.
た and しょく are among its many readings.

In fact, the Wikipedia article you already linked states this nice and
concisely:

> In modern Japanese, it is mostly used to gloss rare kanji, to clarify rare,
> nonstandard or ambiguous kanji readings, or in children's or learners'
> materials.

You will notice that _manga_ published in _shounen_ magazines will (almost?)
always have _furigana_ , while it's far less common in _seinen_ magazine
_manga_ , simply because by the upper end of the _seinen_ age range, people
know enough _kanji_ to read it all. (I have noticed a few in _seinen_ books,
but as far as I know they're less common, such as the _kanji_ for もらう.)
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Furigana is used to clarify how a word should be pronounced. It's common in
books for children, since children probably aren't familiar enough with kanji
to be able to read the text. With the furigana at the side, they can figure
out what the word means based on the pronunciation, while at the same time
they can learn the kanji and will be able to recognize the word in the future.

Furigana can also provide rare readings that the reader probably wouldn't be
able to guess without it. For example, 赤茄子 can be read as トマト. Another example
is the common word 私. This word means "I" and is usually pronounced わたし,
although it can also be pronounced わたくし to make it sound more formal. If the
author writes 私 but intends the わたくし reading, there's no way to convey that
without furigana (except maybe context, but that's not always reliable). This
reason is why you'll see it sometimes in content for adults.

It's also used a lot with names, since names often have completely irregular
and unpredictable pronunciations.
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