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When using a "te wa ikenai" construction, do you have to write "ikenai"
without kanji, or can you use 行?

For example:

> 働かなくてはいけない

vs:

> 働かなくては行けない

My understanding was that the idiom was that such and such "cannot go" (almost
like if you tell somebody in English that something "won't fly"), but are you
resigned to not using kanji?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-17T17:15:35.853
16002
2014-05-17T17:48:13.710
1771
question
kanji て-form imperatives
てはいけない or ては行けない?
The general rule is to write words with auxiliary function in kana, so it's
usually written

> 働かなくてはいけない

Searching the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ, 少納言,
<http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon>), なくてはいけない has 902 results from books,
newspapers, blogs, etc., whereas なくては行けない has only 4 results from internet
sources (3 from Yahoo! ブログ, 1 from Yahoo! 知恵袋).

Other examples of words with auxiliary function would be とき (as in 小さいとき) or
みる (as in やってみる).

なくては行けない only accounts for 0.4% of results, but 小さい時 for 41.9% and やって見る for
5.2%. I think that this reflects how literal the expression is still felt to
be.

In any case, in your case it's quite clear that なくてはいけません should be written
without kanji.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-17T17:48:13.710
16005
2014-05-17T17:48:13.710
1628
16002
answer