Magic: The Gathering - Vocabulary in Japanese and English

Japanese printings of Magic: The Gathering (マジック：ザ・ギャザリング) put kanji, kana, and katakana on the same card face. The list below lines those printed words up with English and Portuguese, so you can read a Japanese card at the table without guessing from the art.

Even if you mostly play other trading card games, a lot of the same zones and verbs show up: library, hand, battlefield, discard, exile. The Japanese forms help the moment you pick up a cheaper foreign copy or sit down with Japanese cards in Japan.

Why would I buy a card in Japanese? Sanctioned play allows otherwise-legal non-English cards, provided the printing is not used to create an advantage with misleading text. A Japanese rare can also cost less than the English copy. If a judge or opponent needs the Oracle wording, they can ask for it; the English name is what the rules use.

You will get further with at least some hiragana and katakana. Power, toughness, and mana costs still need Japanese numbers when the numerals are written in kanji.

Magic: The Gathering in Japanese

The table mixes table talk (こうげきをします) with the printed keywords you actually see on cards. Official Japanese uses kanji for most evergreen abilities: 飛行, 速攻, 絆魂. A few older lines stay because they still appear on reprints, such as 威嚇 for Intimidate, which Menace (威迫) later replaced as the evergreen version.

One mix-up that shows up a lot: 荒地 is Wastes, the colorless basic land. 追放 is Exile, the zone. Treat them as two different words when you sort a Japanese pile.

Responsive Table: Scroll the table sideways with your finger >>

When a Japanese card hits the battlefield, start with the keyword line and the land types. The English Oracle still decides identical names and reminder text if the table and the card disagree.