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剣

Also blade, clock hand

Readings

On’yomi

  • ケン

Kun’yomi

  • つるぎ
On’yomi and kun’yomi?

On’yomi are readings that came from Chinese, written here in katakana. Kun’yomi are native Japanese readings, written in hiragana. Which one is used depends on the word: kanji in compounds often take an on’yomi, and a kanji standing alone often takes a kun’yomi.

Stroke order

Strokes from KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Example words

  • 剣(けん)sword (esp. a large, double-edged one); blade
  • 剣劇(けんげき)sword play; samurai drama
  • 剣士(けんし)swordsman; swordswoman; fencer
  • 剣道(けんどう)kendo; Japanese martial art using bamboo swords
  • 真剣(しんけん)serious; earnest
  • 刀剣(とうけん)sword; dagger; knife
Where do these words come from?

They are common words containing 剣, from JMdict, picked automatically with words made of easier kanji first. They are not graded by JLPT level.

Keep exploring

Same radical. KANJIDIC2 files these kanji under radical 刀 (no. 18), like 剣 (the 8 most common of 28 in the collection).

What is a radical?

Dictionaries file every kanji under one of 214 radicals, a component used for looking it up. A shared radical often hints at a shared theme, but not always, and it says nothing certain about a character’s history. A radical can change shape inside a kanji, as 水 becomes 氵.

Additional detailsSchool grade, frequency, Unicode and sources
School grade
Secondary school
Newspaper frequency
1,305 of 2,500
Classical radical
刀 no. 18
Unicode
U+5263

School grade comes from the Japanese school curriculum. Frequency is the rank among the 2,500 most common kanji in newspapers. Neither is a JLPT level.

Sources for this entry