>>2205367You don't "read" kanji. There's no system of rules or structure in place for understanding or interpreting kanji. Each one has a meaning on its own and more meanings based on what they're paired with and you simply memorize all of these on a case by case basis.
To be functionally 'literate' in Japanese you need to memorize a couple thousand of the most common kanji and their paired forms, but if you encounter a kanji you've never seen before, it's just a question mark. You would have to look it up in a dictionary to know how it's read and pronounced and what kanji it pairs with because there's no ruleset connecting the strokes that form a kanji with its meaning or pronunciation. Most japanese people will struggle with kanji that describe artsy poetic things, historical, academic or political events/ideas and so on, simply because they aren't common enough in everyday life to be worth memorizing. The language very explicitly stratifies the 'common' and 'elevated' reader just by the accessibility of the vocabulary, and as a result 'the average' japanese citizen has a very narrow perception of the world.
It's for this reason that academic topics like science, philosophy or political theory almost never use furigana. The attitude is that the commoners simply aren't good enough to read such high-minded works of theory.
