The purpose of this study was to examine whether phonological information was activatedautomatically in processing two-kanji compound words. In Experiment 1, 27 participants judgedwhether pairs of the words were homophones, while another 27 participants judged whether pairswere synonyms. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was 140 ms, 230 ms, or 320 ms. InExperiment 2, 36 participants were asked to make one of the two judgments, as in Experiment 1.SOA was determined individually. The following results were found. Reaction times showedsemantic interference. Phonological interference was observed only under the shortest SOA inExperiment 2. Error rates showed phonological and semantic interferences even when SOA wasthe longest. These findings support the universal phonological principle.