官 currently only allows “government” as an answer, yet everywhere else I look this kanji up, it seems to carry bureaucrat as its first meaning.
What’s more interesting is that WaniKani has 2 kanji where it uses “Government” as its one and only primary meaning 官 and 府, but when digging in, it looks like they are distinctly different.
官 seems closer to government official while 府 seems closer to governing body/government office/prefecture.
I think even adding (bureaucrat or government official) as the primary meaning of 官 makes makes it easier to remember given the B in bear and B in bureaucrat can serve as an additional mnemonic que.
I think they carry slightly different nuances. I would rather say that 府 relates to “government” as the institution and 官 to things related to the state like government offices. The overlap with 官 as government official (person, post) might not be big enough.
There is also 館 which indicates public officials or locations of public use.
It’s true you can add your own synonym, but in cases like this where both terms carry a singular meaning of “Government” in WaniKani, when they have different nuances, and slightly different meanings when you look then up elsewhere, it makes sense to make the change at WaniKani level to be more correct and easier to discern and remember the two.
I’ve personally already added a synonym, but also feel this should be corrected for new learners as well.
I said that and after a while came across several words using 官 to describe a person so I think this might not be such a bad idea to add “bureaucrat” or “public official” or some such as official synonym and explain that in the item info note.