Why does furigana occasionally appear as katakana?


I've seen some kanji whose furigana is actually katakana. For example, see the
following manga cover for 桜蘭高校ホスト部. When would a kanji character ever be
pronounced as a loan word?

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I6ekL.jpg)




This tends to be a style choice by an author, who uses a kanji for
aesthetic/readability purposes for a word which is usually expressed with 外来語
(borrowed words from foreign languages). The author can choose to do this for
a few reasons. Often if they are concerned that the 外来語 they're using will not
be understood by everyone, they use kanji to express the meaning of the word
with the 外来語 as furigana. In this case ホストクラブ is a common word that would be
recognised by everyone, so perhaps they did it to shorten the written title?

Note that クラブ is **not** an actual pronunciation of 部, and would never usually
be read as such. Without the furigana to specify pronunciation this would
almost certainly be read as ぶ here.




This tends to be a style choice by an author, who uses a kanji for
aesthetic/readability purposes for a word which is usually expressed with 外来語
(borrowed words from foreign languages). The author can choose to do this for
a few reasons. Often if they are concerned that the 外来語 they're using will not
be understood by everyone, they use kanji to express the meaning of the word
with the 外来語 as furigana. In this case ホストクラブ is a common word that would be
recognised by everyone, so perhaps they did it to shorten the written title?

Note that クラブ is **not** an actual pronunciation of 部, and would never usually
be read as such. Without the furigana to specify pronunciation this would
almost certainly be read as ぶ here.

