Japanese Punctuation and Special Characters (Yakumono)

Like any written language, Japanese uses its own punctuation marks and special characters. Collectively they are known as yakumono (約物) — a catch-all term for the symbols that sit between, before, or after the actual characters: periods, commas, quotation marks, brackets, the interpunct, the wave dash, and others that simply do not exist in English. This guide walks you through what they are called, what they look like, and where you will meet them.

Two related topics have their own articles and will not be repeated in depth here: dakuten (゛) and handakuten (゜), which are voicing marks rather than true punctuation, and spaces in the Japanese language, which explains when writers leave a gap and when they do not.

On a Japanese keyboard these marks are full-width, so you do not need a space after 、 or 。 before continuing to type. The system took its modern shape in the 19th century, when European conventions were adopted during the Meiji era and adapted to a script that mixes kanji with two syllabaries.

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The main punctuation marks in Japanese

Five marks do most of the everyday work in modern Japanese writing.

Comma — tōten / tokuten (読点)

The Japanese comma looks like an English comma rotated 90 degrees: 、, read as tōten (also tokuten). It marks a short pause inside a sentence and separates listed items — with one key difference from English. Where English punctuation is tightly rule-bound, the Japanese comma behaves more like a breath-mark: drop it wherever you would naturally pause when speaking.

Ellipsis — san ten rīdā (三点リーダー)

The three dots (…), read san ten rīdā (often shortened to rīdā), signal an intentional omission, a trailing thought, hesitation, or a moment of silence in dialogue — the same range as in English. Two-dot or four-dot variants appear in older texts, but three dots is the modern default.

Period — kuten (句点)

The Japanese period is a small square with a dot in the middle: 。, read kuten. It marks the end of a complete sentence. In vertical writing it sits at the upper right of the final character, and it is sometimes dropped after a closing quotation mark — the close-quote already signals the boundary.

Exclamation mark — kantanfu (感嘆符)

The exclamation mark ！, read kantanfu, marks strong feeling, surprise, shouting, or the end of an emphatic sentence. In formal writing it appears sparingly; in casual messages and manga it can show up several times in a row (！！) for extra punch. The half-width ! is reserved for code, math, or foreign fragments.

Question mark — gimonfu (疑問符)

Strictly speaking, a normal Japanese question does not need a symbol: ending the sentence with the particle ka (か) already marks it as a question. You will still see the full-width question mark ？ often, read gimonfu, in casual writing, headlines, manga, and any sentence that ends with rising intonation but no ka — short interjections like nani? (What?) or maji?. When the question mark appears, the trailing ka is usually dropped.

Points and special characters

A second group of marks handles emphasis, structure, song lyrics, and a few visual effects you will not find in English punctuation.

Colon — koron (コロン)

The Japanese colon is the full-width ：, read koron. It signals that what follows proves, clarifies, or enumerates what came before — the same job it does in English. You will see it before lists, definitions, and quoted material.

Dash — nakasen (中線)

The Japanese horizontal dash ―, read nakasen, is a long bar roughly the width of one kanji. It is the closest equivalent of an English em-dash, used for explanatory asides, "from… to…" ranges, and addresses. Do not confuse it with the katakana long-vowel mark (ー, chōonpu), which extends a katakana syllable.

Partial alternation mark (〽)

The mark 〽 is read ioriten (庵点) or kakigō (歌記号), the "song mark." It indicates that the snippet is from a song or that the speaker is singing. In manga you will see it floating above a character's head to show humming.

Musical note (♪, ♫)

The eighth note ♪ and the beamed pair ♫ flag a sung line, a lyric, or background music. In Japanese chat they are often sprinkled in to add a playful or affectionate tone, even when no song is involved.

Repetition signs

Japanese has a small family of marks that mean "repeat the previous character." They are part of the broader category odoriji (踊り字), literally "dancing characters," and they save writers from redrawing the same kanji or kana twice.

Dō no jiten (々・仝): doubles the previous kanji. The first form is the everyday one (人々, hitobito, "people"); the second is reserved for names and formal documents.
Ichi no jiten (ヽ): doubles the previous katakana, used mostly in older or formal katakana texts.
Katakana-gaeshi (ヾ): doubles the previous katakana and adds dakuten at the same time.
Hiragana-gaeshi (ゝ): doubles the previous hiragana, mostly in older or formal writing.
Hiragana-gaeshi (ゞ): doubles the previous hiragana and adds dakuten.

Outside historical contexts you will mostly meet 々. The kana versions survive mainly in legal documents and classical literature.

Interposition point — nakaguro (中黒)

Literally "black center," the nakaguro is the small black dot ・ placed at the vertical center of a line, sometimes called the interpunct in English. The mark has no single English equivalent; its job is to keep things visually and semantically separate. You will see it used to:

separate Japanese words that would blur into one meaning if written side by side (引き合い・止め, "reference and stop");
separate items in a list, as a flatter alternative to 、 (和食・洋食・中華, "Japanese, Western, Chinese");
separate foreign words or names written in katakana (コーヒー・紅茶, "coffee, black tea");
separate a person's name from a title or company (山田・太郎・社長, "Yamada Taro, company president");
act as a decimal point and as a substitute for hyphens, dashes, or colons in vertical writing.

Read ・ as "pause, but not a sentence boundary" and most uses fall into place.

Wave dash — nami dasshu (波ダッシュ)

The wave dash 〜, read nami dasshu, sits roughly where a tilde sits in English typography and is its own mark with a fixed set of jobs:

show ranges, replacing the particles kara (から) and made (まで): 東京〜大阪, "Tokyo to Osaka";
separate a title from a subtitle on the same line, especially on book covers and CD spines;
mark a source, as in フランス〜 (from France);
stretch a vowel for a playful or musical effect — long vowels in song lyrics, exaggerated reactions in manga;
suggest that music is playing in the background.

The tilde character ~ on your keyboard is a different symbol, sitting on the baseline rather than at the center of the line. Only the centered 〜 is the wave dash.

Brackets and quotation marks

Japanese uses a larger family of paired marks than English does, all called kakko (括弧). In vertical writing the round and square pairs are rotated 90 degrees.

Common bracket types

{ } — namikakko (波括弧): "wave brackets," the curly braces. Used to group items in set notation, math, or alternative readings.
( ) — marukakko (丸括弧): "round brackets," the everyday parentheses, used for asides, definitions, and short explanations.
[ ] — kakukakko (角括弧): "cornered brackets," the square brackets, used to mark editorial insertions, citations, or technical notes.
【】 — sumitsukikakko (隅付き括弧): "bracketed corners," used for emphasis or to highlight a term being defined.
〔〕 — kikkō kakko (亀甲括弧): "tortoise-shell brackets," used in dictionaries for furigana and bibliographic data.
〈〉 — yama kakko (山括弧): "mountain brackets," the angle brackets, used for titles of works, ship names, or a source inside a quotation.

Round brackets are also the standard place to show furigana, the small kana printed next to a kanji to indicate its reading: 日本語(にほんご).

Quotation marks

Japanese quotation marks come in two pairs, each with its own slot:

「」 — kagi kakko (鉤括弧): the standard single quotation marks, used for direct speech, titles of short works, and emphasized words.
『』 — nijū kagi kakko (二重鉤括弧): the double quotation marks, used for nested quotations (a quote inside a quote) and for titles of longer works like books, films, and manga series.

The nesting rule is simple: the outer layer is 『』, the inner layer is 「」 — the opposite of English, where double quotes wrap single quotes. Quoted dialogue in a novel will often nest two levels deep without confusion.

How Japanese punctuation was standardized

Before the Meiji era (1868 onwards), Japanese was written almost without punctuation. Sentences ran together and were parsed by particle placement and context. The marks you see today were introduced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, drawing on European models (commas, periods, quotation marks) and adapting them to a script that mixes kanji with two syllabaries. The result looks familiar to an English reader at first glance but quietly does its own thing.

Tips for learners

A few habits make life with yakumono much easier.

Treat the full-width forms as the "normal" version. Half-width commas, periods, and question marks look visually thin and out of place.
Leave a space after English punctuation but never after Japanese punctuation — full-width marks already have built-in breathing room.
Use ・ to separate foreign words and break up long sequences of kanji.
Reach for 〜 only for ranges, song effects, and the title-subtitle pattern.
Type these marks through a Japanese IME. Copy-pasting from the web often gives the wrong Unicode (half-width ? mark, ASCII tilde, or a Chinese full stop).

Yakumono is a small system, but it carries a lot of the rhythm and tone of written Japanese. Read a page of manga with this guide in mind and the marks stop being decoration, becoming part of the language itself. Which mark tripped you up the most when you first started reading Japanese — the tōten, the wave dash, or the nested quotation marks?

Punctuation and special characters of the Japanese language