2 Powers of 10

2.1 Large numbers

Very large numbers are created by grouping digits in fours (every 10000) rather than the Western threes (1000):

Rank	104	108	1012	1016	1020
Character	万	億	兆	京	垓
Name	man	oku	cho	kei	gai

Examples: (spacing by groups of four digits is given only for clarity of explanation)
1`0000 : 一万 : ichi-man
983`6703 : 九百八十三万六千七百三 : kyū-hyaku hachi-jū san man, roku-sen nana-hyaku san
20`3652`1801 : 二十億三千六百五十二万千八百一 : ni-jū oku, san-zen rop-pyaku go-jū ni-man, sen hap-pyaku ichi

To make matters more confusing, in modern usage, numbers written in Arabic numerals are separated by commas every three digits following Western convention, yet spoken using the Japanese four-digit division.

Note that, in Japanese, when long numbers are written out in kanji, zeros are omitted for all powers of ten, unlike Chinese, which requires the use of 零 wherever a zero appears, e.g. 三百零二 for 302.

2.2 Decimal fractions

Japanese also has numerals for decimal fractions, though they are no longer in general use except for batting and fielding averages of baseball players, winning percentages for sports teams, and in some idiomatic phrases (such as 五分五分の勝負 "fifty-fifty chance"), and when representing a rate or discount.

To represent these decimal fractions of rate or discount, the following words are used:

Rank	10-1	10-2	10-3	10-4	10-5
Character	割	分	厘	毛	糸
Reading	wari	bu	rin	mou	shi

For example:
一割五分引き ichi-wari go-bu biki "15% discount"
打率三割八分九厘 daritsu san-wari hachi-bu kyu-rin "batting average .389"

With the exception of wari, these are rarely seen in modern usage. Decimal fractions are typically written with either kanji numerals (vertically) or Arabic numerals (horizontally), preceded by a decimal point, and are read as successive digits, as in Western convention. Note that they can be combined with either the traditional system of expressing numerals (42.195 kilometers: 四十二・一九五 キロメートル), in which powers of ten are written, or with the place value system, which uses zero (50.04 percent: 五〇・〇四 パーセント).

3 Formal numbers

Finally, Japanese has a separate set of kanji for numerals in legal documents, to prevent an unscrupulous person from adding a stroke or two, turning a one into a two or a three. These are

Formal	Common	Arabic
壱	一	1
弐	二	2
参	三	3
肆	四	4
伍	五	5
陸	六	6
漆	七	7
捌	八	8
玖	九	9
拾	十	10
廿	二十	20
佰	百	100
仟	千	1,000
萬	万	10,000

4 See also

• Japanese counter wordJapanese language In Japanese counter words or counters josushi ) are used along with numbers to enumerate objects. In Japanese, as in Chinese, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves (except, in certain cases, for the numbers from one to ten; see be

5 External links

• http://www.moroo.com/uzokusou/misc/suumei/suumei.html [in Japanese]

Numerals

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