Kanji Kaisen

字の旅3,000 years in three forms

Bronze · Western ZhouWestern Zhou · c. 1000 BCE曶壺蓋 (mid Western Zhou)

Bronze: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The bronze and seal stages show 手, not 扌 itself.

部首Radical · in Human Body & People

扌

扌 hand (side form)

てへん tehen

3 strokesRadical of 89 kanjiPart of 89

Your ink in 扌0% painted · 0 of 89 familiar

Origin · sourced

Pictogram象形

Hand and fingers. The top stroke is the bent over middle finger, while the horizontal strokes are each two fingers.

Source: Wiktionary, 手 (rev. 93659566), the entry for the full form, CC BY-SA 4.0

Memory story · made up to help you remember

“Imagine a hand reaching out from the left to grab, hold, or shape the world! When you see these three strokes, think of a hand in motion. It tells you the kanji involves an action—something being made, hit, measured, or manipulated by human effort.”

Where it sits in a kanji

Indicates physical actions, especially those performed with the hands or involving manual labor and skill

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育つ

What it grows into

Built from 扌, with sourced origins
一覧

Every kanji with 扌 as its radical

Most used first
Ink shades, lightest to darkest: 白 Not met, 淡 Met, 中 Learning, 濃 Familiar, 印 Mastered

All 89 kanji

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