字の旅3,000 years in four forms
Oracle bone · ShangShang · c. 1200 BCE鐵16.1 合11654
Oracle bone: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Bronze and small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
部首Radical · in Human Body & People
目 eye
め me · as a side part めへん mehen
5 strokesRadical of 21 kanjiPart of 25
Origin · sourced
Pictogram象形
Human eye, now rotated 90 degrees.
Source: Wiktionary, 目 (rev. 93947436), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“See the world through this upright window! This is an eye standing tall. The inner horizontal lines represent the iris and pupil. It is the root of all kanji related to seeing, watching, and understanding the physical appearance of the world around us.”
Where it sits in a kanji
Relates to vision, the act of looking, mental attention, or the physical eye itself
What it grows into
- 県prefectureケン · かける
目 + 木 + 糸
To hang with the string 糸 by the head 目 (using an eye to represent a head) on a tree 木. Originally referred to 懸 (“to hang”); later jiajie (假借) for 縣 (“administrative division”).
Ideogrammic compound · Wiktionary, 縣, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 直straightawayチョク · ただちに
目 + 丨
Oracle bone script: Ideogrammic compound (會意): 目 (“eye”) + 丨 (“?”).
Ideogrammic compound · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 看watch overカン · みる
Every kanji with 目 as its radical
All 21 kanji