Kan-on orkan'on (漢音;Japanese pronunciation:[kaꜜɰ̃.oɴ]or[kaɰ̃.oɴ], "Han sound") areJapanesekanji readings borrowed fromChinese during theTang dynasty, from the 7th to the 9th centuries; a period which corresponds to the JapaneseNara period. They were introduced by, among others, envoys fromJapanese missions to Tang China.Kan-on should not be confused withtō-on (唐音,Tang sound), which were later phonetic loans.

Kan-on areon'yomi (音読み) based on the centralChang'an pronunciation ofMiddle Chinese.^[1] The syllableKan is a reading ofMiddle Chinese:漢 (xan^H) as perJapanese phonology, referring to theHan dynasty, which had Chang'an as itscapital city.^[1] Furthermore,Kan (漢) has also become a description for all things Chinese, e.g.,kanji ('Chinese characters').

Kan'on partly displaced the earliergo-on, which were "just imitations ofKorean imitations, butKan-on were imitations of the real thing."^[1]

A minority of characters never had theirkan-on transmitted to Japan; theirkan-on are sometimes reconstructed inJapanese dictionaries although not specifically marked as such. A few dictionaries go as far as to discard attestedkan-on in favour of more systematic pronunciations.^[1]

• On'yomi: Sino-Japanese readings
  • Go-on: an earlier type of reading
  • Tō-on: a later type of reading
• Checked tone

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