The present study investigated phonological assembly in the Japanese language. Twenty-eight native Japanese speakers were presented with CVCVCV-structured words and nonwords in hiragana. Participants were asked to make lexical decisions for 25 words and 25 nonwords. In the assembly condition, meaningful words were anagrammed so that participants had to assemble apparently nonsensical morae into a meaningful unit in order to make a lexical decision. The reaction times for the assembly condition were substantially slower (a difference of 1770 ms) than those for the control condition. This result suggests that phonological assembly for three hiragana morae is involved in identifing meaningful words from the Japanese lexicon.