Ateji

In modern Japanese, ateji (当て字, 宛字 or あてじ?, literally "assigned characters") primarily refers to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. This is analogous to man'yōgana in pre-modern Japanese. The term ateji is also used for the opposite process, writing words using kanji for meaning only, without regard to the reading.