The reading one , or on' yomi (音読み, “reading of the sound”), of a Kanji is that resulting historically from Chinese. It coexists in particular with the reading kun or Kun' yomi .

The passage of the Chinese phoneme to the Japanese phoneme was not done without evil (two languages being very different). Let us tons disappeared, certain sounds changed. For that, it should be added the fact that the loans were made at various times and various Chinese dialects, and as the two languages evolved/moved (as well from a point of view of the language as from the point of view of the writing). Nevertheless, one can sometimes bring the reading one and the pronunciation in Mandarin closer to very the Sinogramme.

The reading one is very often used to form words made up of several kanji (enough often the literary or erudite terms). In that, one can compare it with our graeco-latin roots.