SHARINGAN — 写輪眼 (Signature Jutsu)

SHARINGAN

代表術「写輪眼」

By Aine · Published 2026-07-20 · Updated 2026-07-20

Sharingan (写輪眼, Sharingan) is the Uchiha clan's hereditary "eye technique": a red, tomoe-patterned dojutsu that lets the user copy any technique it sees, read subtle movement, and cast powerful genjutsu. Kakashi Hatake, who received one from a dying teammate, is the first user the manga shows on-page (Vol. 2). Its evolved form, Mangekyo Sharingan (万華鏡写輪眼, "Kaleidoscope Sharingan"), awakens only after profound emotional trauma and grants far more dangerous space-time and illusion techniques. VIZ keeps 写輪眼 romanized as "SHARINGAN" throughout, though its earliest volumes stack a literal gloss beside it — "THE MIRROR-WHEEL EYE" — before dropping the translation for good.

Japanese	写輪眼
Reading	しゃりんがん
Romaji	Sharingan
Official VIZ	SHARINGAN
Literal	Copy Wheel Eye
Used by	Kakashi Hatake, Sasuke Uchiha, Itachi Uchiha

Japanese

写輪眼

Reading

しゃりんがん

Romaji

Sharingan

Official VIZ

SHARINGAN

Literal

Copy Wheel Eye

Used by

Kakashi Hatake, Sasuke Uchiha, Itachi Uchiha

Kanji breakdown

写 (sha) — "to copy/photograph/reflect," the same root as 写真 (shashin, "photograph"), directly naming the eye's signature copying ability. 輪 (rin) — "ring/wheel," describing the eye's circular tomoe pattern. 眼 (gan) — "eye," the more clinical/anatomical reading (versus 目, me) used across all of the series' named dojutsu (Byakugan, Rinnegan). 万華鏡 (mangekyō) — "kaleidoscope," literally "ten-thousand flowers mirror" (万 many + 華 flower + 鏡 mirror), the real Japanese word for the optical toy, repurposed to describe the evolved Sharingan's fractured, pinwheel-like pattern.

Japanese original Sasuke Uchiha reacting to Kakashi's Sharingan for the first time, Naruto Vol. 2

VIZ English edition Sasuke Uchiha reacting to Kakashi's Sharingan for the first time, Naruto Vol. 2

Every appearance in the manga

Vol / page	Japanese line	VIZ English
Vol. 2 p.84	しゃりんが写輪眼のカカシがいたんじゃなァ．．．	IT'S KAKASHI THE MIRROR NINJA- KAKASHI OF THE SHARINGAN EYE!
Vol. 2 p.90	写輪眼！？	THE SHARINGAN— THE MIRROR WHEEL EYE?!
Vol. 2 p.93	写輪眼とはその瞳術使いが特有に備えもつ瞳の種類の一つ．．．	A MIRROR-WHEEL, OR SHARINGAN, EYE IS ONE OF SEVERAL TYPES USED BY THE MASTERS...
Vol. 7 p.153	写輪眼〆	SHARINGAN!!
Vol. 16 p.145	この〝万華鏡写輪眼〟に多少の抵抗は出来る	...ONE CAN RESIST THIS MANGEKYO TO SOME EXTENT.
Vol. 17 p.21	万華鏡写輪眼〃	MANGEKYO SHARINGAN!!
Vol. 25 p.133	万華鏡写輛眼！！	MANGEKYO SHARINGAN...
Vol. 25 p.145	お前もオレと同じ万華鏡写輪眼を開眼しうる者だ	JUST LIKE ME, YOU HAVE THE POWER TO AWAKEN THE MANGEKYO SHARINGAN.
Vol. 43 p.215	オレの写輪眼は幻術を見抜くン．	MY SHARINGAN CAN SEE THROUGH GENJUTSU!
Vol. 70 p.52	母は白眼以外に写輪眼の力をも有していた	MOTHER POSSESSED THE POWER OF SHARINGAN AS WELL AS BYAKUGAN.

Lines are byte-exact captures from a 43,000-pair bilingual corpus of the Japanese tankōbon and official VIZ Media edition.

The corpus's first Sharingan mention (Vol. 2 p.84) doesn't even wait for a clean introduction — an enemy ninja recognizes Kakashi mid-fight and blurts "しゃりんが写輪眼のカカシがいたんじゃなァ" ("IT'S KAKASHI... KAKASHI OF THE SHARINGAN EYE!"), and the reveal panel six pages later (used for this entry's crop) has Sasuke visibly shaken: "写輪眼！？" rendered "THE SHARINGAN— THE MIRROR-WHEEL EYE?!" That page is doing the same double-duty translation the corpus shows for several other dojutsu in this dictionary (compare Byakugan's "ALL-SEEING EVIL EYE" gloss): VIZ clearly didn't trust readers to absorb a bare loanword cold in Volume 2, so it pairs the romanized brand name with a literal English gloss for a few pages of introduction (Vol. 2 pp.90–95: "MIRROR WHEEL EYE," "MIRROR-WHEEL, OR SHARINGAN, EYE") before retiring the gloss entirely by Vol. 7, where "写輪眼〆" simply becomes "SHARINGAN!!" — no scaffolding needed once the term has stuck.

Mangekyo Sharingan gets no such hand-holding at all. Its first corpus appearance (Vol. 16 p.145) is mid-conversation, translated as bare "MANGEKYO" with no gloss, and by Vol. 17's first full shout ("万華鏡写輪眼〃" / "MANGEKYO SHARINGAN!!") the two words are simply stapled together as one romanized compound — VIZ apparently decided by this point in the run (roughly four years into serialization) that its readership could handle new terminology without training wheels. The irony is that 万華鏡 (kaleidoscope) is one of the few Sharingan-family terms with a perfectly natural, exact English equivalent, and VIZ chooses not to use it even once in the sampled occurrences — Itachi's own explanation of how he awakened it (Vol. 25 p.133, "それがまさに万華鏡写輪眼がある" / "...IT'S CALLED MANGEKYO SHARINGAN") treats the compound as a fixed proper noun, not a description to translate.

写輪眼 is the single most cited term in this entire signature-jutsu set — 235 corpus mentions for the base Sharingan alone, plus 63 for Mangekyo, 298 combined — which tracks with how the ability functions as a plot engine across nearly the whole manga: every major Uchiha character, plus Kakashi, is defined by which stage of Sharingan they carry. The Vol. 70 crossover hit sampled here ("母は白眼以外に写輪眼の力をも有していた" / "MOTHER POSSESSED THE POWER OF SHARINGAN AS WELL AS BYAKUGAN") is a late-series reveal that briefly merges this entry's bloodline with the Hyuga's — worth cross-referencing against the Byakugan entry in this dictionary.