字の旅3,000 years in four forms
Oracle bone · ShangShang · c. 1200 BCE
Oracle bone: Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Bronze and small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
部首Radical · in Action & Movement
革
革 leather
つくりがわ tsukurigawa
9 strokesRadical of 3 kanjiPart of 2
Your ink in 革0% painted · 0 of 3 familiar
Origin · sourced
Pictogram象形
A stretched animal hide: the upper is head, the bottom is the tail and legs. The hands 臼 around the hide were briefly added later.
Source: Wiktionary, 革 (rev. 93647842), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Stretch it tight! Imagine a tough piece of animal hide being carefully prepared by a master tanner. This radical represents the transformation of nature into something protective and long-lasting—the leather used for shoes, armor, and belts. When you see it, think of durability, the smell of a tannery, and the hard "revolution" of changing a raw material into a refined product.”
Where it sits in a kanji
Indicates leather, hide, shoes, protective gear, the act of tanning/scraping, or concepts related to reform and "revolution" (changing layers/skins).
育つ
What it grows into
Built from 革, with sourced origins
- 靴shoesカ · くつ
革 + 化sound
Phono-semantic compound · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
一覧
Every kanji with 革 as its radical
Most used first
Ink shades, lightest to darkest: 白 Not met, 淡 Met, 中 Learning, 濃 Familiar, 印 Mastered
All 3 kanji