Wasei-kango (Japanese: 和製漢語, "Japanese-made Chinese words") refers to words in the Japanese language composed of Chinese morphemes but invented in Japan rather than borrowed from China. Such terms are generally written using kanji and read according to the on'yomi pronunciations of the characters. While many words belong to the shared Sino-Japanese vocabulary, some kango do not exist in Chinese while others have a substantially different meaning from Chinese. During the Meiji Restoration, Japanese words were invented en masse to represent western concepts such as revolution (革命 kakumei) or democracy (民主 minshu). Towards the end of the 19th century, many of these terms were re-imported into Chinese. As the form of the words entirely resembles that of native Chinese words in most cases, Chinese speakers often fail to recognize that they were actually coined in Japan.

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