e, gara, hei E柄 and gara柄 have different meanings. E is the handle of something long like a stick. Gara, zugara or egara is a pattern or a design. Hanagara is a floral pattern. Gara also means one’s character. Kunigara is a national character. Hitogara is personality. Aidagara is a relationship. Iegara is the social [...]

ken Meaning ‘to examine’ or ‘to test,’ this character is used for the following words. kensa … inspection, examination, or a test tenken … checking, examination, inspection tanken … expedition

  sen Sen is a plug for sealing a hole. It may be a stopper or a cork. A bottle opener is called sennuki. Nuki comes from nuku, which is a verb meaning ‘to pull up.’

kai This character is included in kikai. It means a machine. The left side of the character is wood and the right side is admonitions. The character originally means fetters and handcuffs made of wood.

mori, shin Mori and shinrin mean a forest. This character is used for surnames and place-names. Ōmori, for example, is used as a surname and is also the name of a certain area in Tōkyō and the name of a station.

mo, bo This character (模) means a model. It is always included in other words. Mokei is a model, a pattern, or a prototype. Kibo means how large something is, that is, the scale or size of something.

hyō This character expresses higher branches of a tree, which everybody can see. Mokuhyō is one’s goal or target. Hyōshiki is a traffic sign. Hyōhon is a sample.

ku-chiru, kyū The character depicts a bent, decayed tree. Kuchiru means to decay or to be rotten. You can enliven characters that have unfavorable meanings like this one, combining them with characters that deny them. Let me show an example with today’s character. Fukyū means immortality or eternity. Fukyūno comes before nouns and means ‘enduring’ [...]

waku Waku is the frame of something such as a window. Abstractive meanings of this character are an outline and limitations. Wakugumi means an outline or a framework. Wakugai means out of a certain range and wakunai is within a certain range. Write the horizontal stroke. Cross the previous stroke. Write the sweeping stroke falling [...]

seki If you remember a character meaning ‘an artisan,’ it has the same radical with the right-hand side of today’s character. The radical depicts ‘an axe.’ Combined with the left-hand side, which is the ‘tree’ radical, the character implies ‘to axe a tree.’ Only two words may be useful to remember but it is useful [...]