Okurigana

Okurigana (送り仮名, accompanying letters?) are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to disambiguate kanji with multiple readings. For example, the non-past verb form 見る (miru, "see") inflects to past tense 見た (mita, "saw"), where 見 is the kanji stem, and る and た are okurigana, written in hiragana script. Okurigana are only used for kun'yomi (native Japanese readings), not for on'yomi (Chinese readings) – Chinese morphemes do not inflect in Japanese, and their pronunciation is inferred from context, as many are used as parts of compound words (kango).