First opened Thursday, November 22, 2012
正義
せいぎ
- head-high (atamadaka): falls after mora 1
How to read it: a line over a kana means the voice is high there, and ↓ marks where it drops. A kana with no line is low. With no ↓ the pitch stays high to the end and does not drop even on a following particle (が, は).
justice, right, righteousness
Seigi is from Middle Chinese 正義, and in the Meiji era it was repurposed to translate Western concepts of “justice”.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
Wiktionary's text doesn't split this word, so each part is one of its kanji (with the okurigana written after it), with the reading and the dictionary meaning KANJIDIC2 gives that character — a word doesn't always use every sense of its kanji.
In a sentence
彼は正義だ。
He is justice.
力は正義なり。
Might is right.
Sentences are from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), picked by fixed rules from a dated export and shown unchanged. Nobody has reviewed them one by one.
What Wiktionary says
Quoted line by line from Wiktionary's Etymology section for this reading, taken from one dated dump so it can't change underneath us. Nothing below is paraphrased.
- “From Middle Chinese 正義 (MC tsyeng|tsyengH ngjeH). Originally referred to the “correct meaning” or “orthodox interpretation” of classical Chinese texts (first attested in Japanese in the Kirei Mondō (貴嶺問答), 1185–1190), as well as “proper righteousness” (attested in the Gukanshō (愚管抄), 1220).”
- “During the Meiji era, the term was repurposed to translate Western legal and philosophical concepts of “justice” (such as English justice, French justice, or German Gerechtigkeit).”
Source: Wiktionary: 正義 (dump of 2026-09-02), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Reading, meaning and part of speech from JMdict, and kanji readings from KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).
Other readings of 正義 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not せいぎ. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
まさよし・ただよし
- “Native Japanese name reading.”
What the labels mean
- 漢語 Sino-Japanese
- Words built from Chinese-derived morphemes — borrowed from Chinese or coined in Japan out of Chinese parts — read with on'yomi.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Meaning shift
- The word's meaning moved away from where it started.