象形・指事・会意・形声

Kanji, ideograms that constitute a bulk of the Japanese written language, come in four rough types. Pictographs, Indicators, Combographs, and Meaning-and-Sound Borrowers.

The first type is pictographs which stand in for the actual thing they represent. Some researchers claim fewer than 4% are actually pictographs.

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1

象形文字

しょうけいもじ

人 biped (human)
女 woman
手 hand
田 ricefield
子 child
日 sun
月 moon
門 gate
山 mountain
川 river
弓 bow (as in “bow and arrow”)
火 fire
戸 Japanese style door
口 mouth, entranceway
水 water
雨 rain
竹 bamboo
木 tree, wood, timber
本 roots (origins)
麦 wheat, barley, oats
目 eye
牛 cow
羊 sheep
馬 horse
鳥 bird
足 Leg/foot
母 Mother
All these are nouns which really limits their applicability in the realm of human affairs.

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2

指事文字
しじもじ

Indicators. Visual stand-in or pointer for a concept. Here are some examples

上 Up/above
下 Down/below
中 Middle/between
一 One
二 Two
三 Three
乃 「の」
音 Sound
天 Heaven
立 Stand up
引 Pull
公 Public
今 Now
世 Society
面 Face, facet
共 Together
仲 Relationship
末 Top end, tip
片 one of a pair

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3

会意文字
かいいもじ

Combographs, kanji composed of two or more kanji to create a third meaning.

“A meeting of meanings” to forge a new alloy with different properties.

武 is composed of 戈 and 止
Military arts = Spear + Stop

「信」は「人」と「言」
Trust (Person + Speak) … Word is bond.

「相」は　「木」と「目」
Physiognomy (tree + eye)

「休」は「人」と「木」
Rest/Take Off/Take break = Person + Tree

「男」は「田」と「力」
Man = Field + Power

「即」は「皀」と「卩」
Namely = Fragrant + Seal

「赤」は「大」と「火」
Red (Big + Fire)

「香」は「黍」と「甘」
Fragrance (Millet + Sweet)

「髟」は「長」と「彡」
Hair hanging long (Long + hair)

形声文字
けいせいもじ

Semantics and Sound Borrowers, meaning and sound borrowers, soundalikes inherit a phonetic value (pronunciation / reading) from one of their subkanji, and inherit meaning from another.

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Meaning and Sound Borrowers make up 90% of Japanese Kanji.

「漢字の約９割が形声文字であるといわれている。」

Roughly 90% of Kanji glyphs used in Japanese are classifiable as Meaning and Sound Borrower kanji.
[Reference 3: shinyuzemi-niigata.wixsite ]

This amazing fact, that 90% of kanji inherit their sound value (phonetic value / reading) from a subkanji has been explored in great detail in the book The Kanji Code. Likely inspired by a dictionary of kanji from Ancient China that contained 6 groups, although the sixth group only has 1 kanji in it, and many scholars prefer to stick to 4 groups for comprehension rather than divide one of the remaining groups in two.

Natalie Hamilton’s The Kanji Code is a great resource in learning the phonetic readings constituting over 90% of the kanji.

形声文字は、音を表わす文字（音符）と、意味を表わす部分（意符）で構成されています。

Sound and Meaning Borrower Kanji have a phonetic helper subkanji and a meaning helper subkanji.

An exhaustive list of these “Soundalike” kanji, that usurp meaning from one and phonetic reading from another, can be found in Reference 4 where they also show derivations like the image above.

紙（シ） ＝ 糸＋氏（シ）	町（チョウ） ＝ 田＋丁（チョウ）
姉（シ） ＝女＋市（シ）	理（リ） ＝王＋里（リ）

In the kanji characters above we can see that the phonetic reading is inherited from the right-hand side (Reference 5).

Here’s a graphical synopsis of the four kinds:

Roughly speaking, we can put a coarse approximation to the number of kanji in each category:

1. Pictographs (3-4%)
2. Indicators (1%)
3. Combographs (5-6%)
4. Meaning-and-Sound-Borrowers (90%)
   also called Shape-and-Sound-Borrowers.

Thanks for reading, we hope that you’ll use this new knowledge to master the kanji swiftly!

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1. https://www.weblio.jp/wkpja/content/%E4%BC%9A%E6%84%8F_%E4%BC%9A%E6%84%8F%E3%81%AE%E6%A6%82%E8%A6%81
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Types_of_kanji_by_category
3. https://shinyuzemi-niigata.wixsite.com/index/single-post/2017/12/06/%E3%80%90%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E3%80%91%E2%91%A0%E8%B1%A1%E5%BD%A2%E3%83%BB%E6%8C%87%E4%BA%8B%E3%83%BB%E4%BC%9A%E6%84%8F%E3%83%BB%E5%BD%A2%E5%A3%B0%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97
4. https://okjiten.jp/19-keiseimoji.html
5. https://katekyo.mynavi.jp/juken/9182
6. Types of Kanji (Originally 6) are largely derived from Xu Shen’s work from 100 CE, presented in 121 CE.