Ateji

In modern Japanese, ateji (当て字, 宛字 or あてじ, pronounced [ate(d)ʑi]; "assigned characters") principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters.^[1] This is similar to man'yōgana in Old Japanese. Conversely, ateji also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.

For example, the word "sushi" is often written with its ateji "寿司". Though the two characters have the readings 'su' and 'shi' respectively, the character '寿' means "one's natural life span" and '司' means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. Ateji as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of katakana (see also Transcription into Japanese), although many ateji coined in earlier eras still linger on.