The dictionary gives both words to mean 'ominous' and they have the same
pronunciation. What is the difference between 不気味 and 無気味?
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2018-07-06T10:05:29.313
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2018-07-06T18:41:50.710
2018-07-06T18:41:50.710
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question
kanji-choice
What is the difference between 不気味 and 無気味?
In your question you write "both words", but in fact _they're the same word_ -
just written two different ways. Both are correct and have the same meaning.

不気味 is the most common way to write the word today. If I search [the Balanced
Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ) with the 少納言
tool](http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon/), I find the following results:

不気味 813  
無気味 131

However, 124 of those 131 results are in the 書籍 subcorpus, and of those 91 are
in the 文学 genre. If I instead check the boxes to only use the Yahoo!知恵袋 and
Yahoo!ブログ subcorpora, I find a much starker contrast:

不気味 129  
無気味 5

In other words, in casual writing people today tend to just write the word as
不気味, but you can still find 無気味 in published writing, mainly in literature.

However, only 45 years ago the situation was different. From 1948 until 1973,
it was taught that this word should always be written 無気味. At the time, the
[Tōyō
Kanji](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BD%93%E7%94%A8%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97)
(predecessor to the Jōyō Kanji) only allowed ふ as a reading for 不, which meant
that the negative prefix ぶ had to be written 無 or ぶ. However, this reform
never fully caught on, and in 1973 the government reversed its decision and
allowed ぶ as a reading for 不 as well, restoring 不気味 as a standard way of
writing the word.

You can still find 無気味 today, but mostly in literature as an aesthetic choice
by the writer. You'll also encounter it if you read pre-war Japanese, for
example [思ひ出す事など](https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000148/files/792_14937.html)
by 夏目漱石, although 不気味 was used commonly in pre-war writing as well.

Since 不気味 is most common in most contexts, I suggest you write it that way
yourself unless you feel you have a reason to do otherwise.
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2018-07-06T14:42:21.167
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2018-07-06T14:42:21.167
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answer