Does the average native Japanese reader know how to pronounce a majority of Kanji found in books?


After studying Japanese for quite a while and having read many books (maybe
over 50-60 over a bunch of different genres), despite the fact I generally
have tried to learn the readings of most words I come across, I always find
myself discovering new words everyday whose pronunciation I don't know. Part
of the time I can guess the reading since I know the common readings of the
Kanji involved, but often not.

Nevertheless, even without understanding every reading and looking up every
word, I still can understand things enough to follow the story.

My question is: Do most adult Japanese natives who read books really know each
and every reading of every word they come across, or is there frequently times
when they aren't sure? I'm sure some academic/intellectual type people who
read very often might know nearly all of the readings, but I'm more curious
about the average person who reads books off and on.

Part of the mystery to me is how one would learn all these readings. Most
adult books don't have that much Furigana, and many of the more advanced words
I am talking about wouldn't be heard frequently, if ever, in daily life. I
just have a hard time believing adult readers would frequently look up Kanji
readings, and instead would just aim to read such that they understand the
overall flow of what is going on.

One example of one such books with a great many difficult words (for me) is
this book, which is what I would call hardcore fantasy:
[https://www.amazon.co.jp/図書館の魔女-上-高田-
大介/dp/4062182025](https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%9B%B3%E6%9B%B8%E9%A4%A8%E3%81%AE%E9%AD%94%E5%A5%B3-%E4%B8%8A-%E9%AB%98%E7%94%B0-%E5%A4%A7%E4%BB%8B/dp/4062182025)

EDIT: As there was some discussion of the above-referenced book with difficult
Japanese, I'll give a link to a review I wrote for it
[here](http://selftaughtjapanese.com/2016/07/19/japanese-novel-review-witch-
of-the-library-%E5%9B%B3%E6%9B%B8%E9%A4%A8%E3%81%AE%E9%AD%94%E5%A5%B3-by-
daisuke-takada-%E9%AB%98%E7%94%B0-%E5%A4%A7%E4%BB%8B/).




As long as you are reading common novels, you can generally believe that
average Japanese speakers can pronounce almost all kanji that don't come with
with furigana (But as for 図書館の魔女, I don't know, since I had no way to review
its contents. According to the book reviews, it seems that the book contains
rather difficult words.)

But there are some "well-known reading mistakes" like
未曾有（×みぞゆう）、踏襲（×ふしゅう）、既出（×がいしゅつ）、and so on and on. This page has many examples.

  * 誤読の世界: <http://homepage2.nifty.com/tei-tagami/newpage5.html>

It contains some words that are no longer common, so you don't have to
memorize them all. But if you are not familiar with _most_ of the words in
this list, it means you still need some more work building up your vocabulary.

And it's hard to tell how often I, for example, come across uncertain words...
For typical novels that are not "hardcore fantasy", I think it should be one
word or two per book chapter, but I may be skipping difficult words almost
unconsciously.

People make errors guessing the readings of place or person names all the
time.




As long as you are reading common novels, you can generally believe that
average Japanese speakers can pronounce almost all kanji that don't come with
with furigana (But as for 図書館の魔女, I don't know, since I had no way to review
its contents. According to the book reviews, it seems that the book contains
rather difficult words.)

But there are some "well-known reading mistakes" like
未曾有（×みぞゆう）、踏襲（×ふしゅう）、既出（×がいしゅつ）、and so on and on. This page has many examples.

  * 誤読の世界: <http://homepage2.nifty.com/tei-tagami/newpage5.html>

It contains some words that are no longer common, so you don't have to
memorize them all. But if you are not familiar with _most_ of the words in
this list, it means you still need some more work building up your vocabulary.

And it's hard to tell how often I, for example, come across uncertain words...
For typical novels that are not "hardcore fantasy", I think it should be one
word or two per book chapter, but I may be skipping difficult words almost
unconsciously.

People make errors guessing the readings of place or person names all the
time.

