Components

亀 means 'turtle'

Animation / stroke order not available.
LOG IN to view this kanji's mnemonic
Strokes : 11    Frequency: 1211   JLPT: N1    Usefulness: 5    Study set: 5-15    Grade: 8   Intermediate lesson: -    Beginner lesson: -   Begins 22 words   Used in 68 words   Used in 975 names   Component in 9 kanji (1 Jōyō)
Jōyō (常用)
On
   キ
Kun
   かめ turtle
On    キュウ   キン
Name    ひさ   ひさし
     
A Joy o' Kanji essay is available for 亀 - click the badge to download
People universally associate turtles with slowness. The Japanese do, too, but they've taken turtle symbolism quite a bit further. They also see these ponderous animals as representing luck, longevity, wisdom, experience, divisiveness, ugliness, and sexual attractiveness! Ugliness and sexual attractiveness?! Quite a range! As if all that weren't enough, 亀 is also a radical and a new addition to the Joyo set, as of 2010.
See essay 1985 on 亀 (turtle; "turtle" radical) to learn about this radical, which doesn't appear in any Jōyō kanji except for 亀 itself but may bring you good luck.
⿳   () corner   rice field   electricity  
Explore these components visually on The Kanji Map ⇗
 electricity  
LOG IN to view kanji mastery data
LOG IN to view your flashcards
In the most useful 10,000 words in Japanese, 亀 is used 2 times, read 2 ways.
Across all words in Japanese, 亀 is used 58 times, read 2 ways (with 2 variations).
Showing:
キ : 18 words FIND ALL
0
noun
crack; crevice; fissure; chap; rift
(click the word to view an additional 3 forms, examples and links)
キ (read as きっ) : 3 words FIND ALL
tortoise shell bondage; turtle shell bondage
(click the word for examples and links)
かめ : 19 words FIND ALL
1
Most common form: カメ
noun
tortoise; turtle
(click the word to view an additional 2 forms, examples and links)
かめ (read as がめ) : 18 words FIND ALL
noun
leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea)  (often written with kana only)
(click the word to view an additional 2 forms, examples and links)
An additional 電 less common words include 亀 but the reading has not yet been categorized.
Henshall: Joy o' Kanji : 1985  Key to Kanji:

Cascading kanji view

キ   かめ turtle   
Please LOG IN to view this kanji's mnemonic
electricity
Please LOG IN to view this kanji's mnemonic
second   おつ    
ニチ   ジツ   sun; day   ひ    -か    
corner
デン   た rice field   
Problem with this kanji? Question or comment? Please CONTACT US.
Kanshudo is your AI Japanese tutor, and your constant companion on the road to mastery of the Japanese language. To get started learning Japanese, just follow the study recommendations on your Dashboard. You can use Quick search (accessible using the icon at the top of every page) to look up any Japanese word, kanji or grammar point, as well as to find anything on Kanshudo quickly. For an overview, take the tour.
Search results include information from a variety of sources, including Kanshudo (kanji mnemonics, kanji readings, kanji components, vocab and name frequency data, grammar points, examples), JMdict (vocabulary), Tatoeba (examples), Enamdict (names), KanjiVG (kanji animations and stroke order), and Joy o' Kanji (kanji and radical synopses). Translations provided by Google's Neural Machine Translation engine. For more information see credits.
×