Japanese Symbols and Their Meanings

Japanese symbols (象徴, shōchō) are the signs that carry a settled meaning in Japan: kanji such as 愛 (love) and 力 (strength), nature and animal motifs like the cherry blossom, the crane, and the koi, Shinto markers like the torii, family crests called kamon, and national emblems. The best known is the red sun disc of the Hinomaru flag, made official by law in 1999.

A Museum in a Coin Purse

Empty a Japanese coin purse onto a café table and you are holding a small lesson in symbols. The 100 yen coin carries cherry blossoms. The 50 yen coin, the one with the hole, carries a chrysanthemum, the flower of the imperial house. The 500 yen coin has paulownia on one side and bamboo and mandarin orange on the other.

My grandmother used to line them up for me in that order before she let me spend any of them. Spring, the emperor, the government. She never called them symbols. She just knew what each flower meant, the way you know which door in your own house sticks.

That is how most Japanese symbols work. Nobody teaches them as a system. They sit on coins, gates, envelopes, and shop counters, and you absorb them. This guide lays the system out: a quick reference first, then kanji, nature, animals, Shinto signs, national emblems, and family crests.

Japanese Symbols and Their Meanings: Quick Reference

Kanji as Symbols

A single kanji is the most searched kind of Japanese symbol, because one character can hold a whole idea. Japan’s table of everyday characters, the jōyō kanji list issued in 2010, holds 2,136 of them, but a handful get looked up far more than the rest.

• Love, 愛 (ai). Deep, caring love, with the heart 心 inside it. Love in Japanese explains why 恋 (koi), romantic longing, is a different word.
• Strength, 力 (chikara). Two strokes of pure force. Strength in Japanese compares it with 強, strong as a quality.
• Peace, 平和 (heiwa), and harmony, 和 (wa). No single kanji means peace. 和 alone means harmony and also Japanese, as in 和食, Japanese food. See peace in Japanese and the idea of wa.
• Life, 命 (inochi). The life you have been given, heavier than the English word. See life in Japanese.
• Death, 死 (shi). It shares its sound with four, 四, which is why hospitals and hotels often skip room 4. See death in Japanese.
• Water, 水 (mizu), and fire, 火 (hi). Elements, and also Wednesday and Tuesday on every Japanese calendar. See water in Japanese and fire in Japanese.
• Moon, 月 (tsuki), and sun, 日 (hi). Month and day, Monday and Sunday. 日 is also the first character of 日本, the origin of the sun, which is Japan in Japanese. See moon in Japanese and sun in Japanese.
• Dragon, 龍 or 竜 (ryuu). Both are correct: 竜 is the school form, 龍 the older sixteen-stroke shape kept for names and tattoos. See dragon in Japanese.

A warning before any of these goes on skin. A lone kanji often reads to a Japanese eye like a dictionary headword rather than a sentiment, the way a tattoo reading “NOUN” would. Worse, much of what circulates online is Chinese. Simplified Chinese writes love as 爱 and dragon as 龙, and neither form is used in Japanese. Check the form, count the strokes, and confirm with a native speaker. Our kanji library is hand-checked for exactly this reason.

Beyond the top ten, a few quieter characters carry just as much. 心 (kokoro) is heart and mind at once, and heart in Japanese shows how its reading changes inside longer words. 魂 (tamashii) is the soul, and soul in Japanese explains the ghost radical in it. 夢 (yume) is a dream, both the kind you sleep through and the kind you chase, in dream in Japanese. Hope takes two characters, 希望 (kibou), as hope in Japanese sets out. And 星 (hoshi), a star, sits among the sky words in star in Japanese.

Nature Symbols

Cherry blossom, 桜 (sakura). The flower most people would name for Japan. It blooms briefly and falls while still perfect, so it stands for beauty that will not last, the feeling called mono no aware. The country sits under it each spring for hanami, and it has been the design of the 100 yen coin since 1967.

Chrysanthemum, 菊 (kiku). The flower of the throne. It came from China as a medicinal plant in the Nara period, and Emperor Go-Toba, who reigned from 1183 to 1198, made it his personal emblem. A 16-petal chrysanthemum now marks the imperial house and Japanese passports, and a single bloom sits on the 50 yen coin. Medium chrysanthemums are also funeral flowers, so they are not a casual gift. Our guide to Japanese flowers covers the rest of the language.

Pine, bamboo, and plum, 松竹梅 (shochikubai). The Three Friends of Winter, first grouped by Chinese scholars for their noble qualities: the pine for its strong roots, the bamboo for growing straight, the plum for its fragrance. Together they mean New Year luck, and pine and bamboo stand in pairs at doorways as kadomatsu.

Maple, 紅葉 (momiji). The autumn answer to the cherry. Red leaves mean the season at its peak, and going out to see them is momijigari, a leaf hunt where nothing is picked.

Bamboo, 竹 (take). Straight, hollow, and fast-growing, and on the back of the 500 yen coin with the mandarin orange.

Mount Fuji, 富士山. At 3,776 meters it is Japan’s highest peak, and since June 2013 a UNESCO World Heritage site listed as a sacred place and a source of artistic inspiration. Hokusai and Hiroshige made it the most recognizable mountain on earth.

Animal Symbols

Crane, 鶴 (tsuru). “Tsuru wa sennen, kame wa mannen”: the crane lives a thousand years and the turtle ten thousand, which makes the pair the standard longevity image for weddings and New Year. The crane also means fidelity, because the red-crowned crane keeps one partner, and a thousand folded paper cranes make a wish. Our Japanese crane guide tells the whole story.

Koi, 鯉. A carp that swims up a waterfall becomes a dragon, so the koi means effort against resistance. Families fly carp streamers, koinobori, for Children’s Day on May 5. The legend is in koi fish.

Dragon, 龍. Japanese dragons are wingless, serpentine water gods who coil through rain clouds rather than hoard gold. Meet them in the Japanese dragon.

Fox, 狐 (kitsune). The messenger of Inari, the rice deity, whose shrines number some thirty thousand. It means cleverness and prosperity, with a trickster’s edge. See kitsune.

Beckoning cat, 招き猫 (maneki-neko). A raised right paw beckons money and a raised left paw beckons customers. Black cats are said to ward off evil and gold ones to bring cash. Tokyo’s Gotokuji temple claims the original, a story told in cat in Japanese.

Tiger, 虎 (tora). Japan has no tigers, but the animal arrived in art as courage and as Byakko, the White Tiger guarding the west. It faces the dragon across paired screens and sleeves. See tiger in Japanese.

Wolf, 狼 (ookami). The last confirmed Japanese wolf was killed in Nara in 1905, but the wolf is still honored at mountain shrines such as Mitsumine, where it guarded crops from deer and boar. See wolf in Japanese.

Sacred and Shinto Symbols

Torii, 鳥居. Two upright posts and two crossbeams that mark the entrance to sacred ground. The word may come from a phrase for a bird perch, though scholars still argue. See torii.

Shimenawa, 注連縄. A twisted straw rope, usually hung with zigzag paper streamers called shide, that marks a place as pure: a sanctuary, a sacred tree, a pair of wedded rocks. See shimenawa.

Omamori, お守り. A small silk pouch from a shrine or temple, each for one purpose: exams, safe driving, childbirth. See omamori.

Ema, 絵馬. A wooden plaque for a wish. The name means horse picture, because horses were once offered to the kami, and painted plaques took their place. See ema.

Hamaya, 破魔矢. A demon-breaking arrow bought at New Year to guard the house. The ofuda, a paper talisman taken home from a shrine, protects the household in the same way. See hamaya.

Daruma, 達磨. The round red doll modeled on Bodhidharma, sold with blank eyes. Paint one when you set a goal and the other when you reach it. See daruma.

Enso, 円相. A circle brushed in one stroke, which museums describe as the circle of Buddhist enlightenment. See enso.

Mitsudomoe, 三つ巴. Three comma shapes swirling in a circle. It began as the crest of Hachiman shrines, honoring a deity of archery and war, and is now a popular crest at shrines of many kinds.

Masks belong here too, since a Shinto mask gives a god a face. Our guide to traditional Japanese masks covers them all.

National Symbols of Japan

The Hinomaru, 日の丸. The name means circle of the sun, and the formal name is Nisshoki. It flew unofficially from 1870 and became the legal national flag under the Act on National Flag and National Anthem in August 1999. The law fixes the design: a white field in proportions of 2 to 3, with a deep red sun at the center whose diameter is three fifths of the flag’s height. The same law made Kimigayo the national anthem, so flag and song became official on the same day.

The chrysanthemum crest, 菊紋 (kikumon). The 16-petal chrysanthemum is the emblem of the imperial house, and it appears on Japanese passports and diplomatic buildings.

The paulownia crest, 五七の桐 (go-shichi no kiri). Paulownia leaves topped by flower spikes, with the name, five-seven, counting their blossoms. It serves as the crest of the Japanese government and the prime minister, and paulownia appears on the 500 yen coin.

Mount Fuji and the cherry. Neither has a law behind it, and neither needs one.

Family Crests (Kamon)

A kamon (家紋) is a family crest, a small emblem, usually in a circle, that marks a household the way a surname does. The custom began around the tenth century among court aristocrats, who painted crests on their ox-drawn carriages. Some designs were reserved: the chrysanthemum for the imperial family, the hollyhock for the Tokugawa shoguns. Today somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 crests are thought to be in use.

Most are drawn from plants, animals, and simple shapes. The five most common are wisteria, paulownia, hawk feathers, flowering quince, and creeping woodsorrel. A crane in a circle, the tsuru-maru, is a classic, and it lives on as the Japan Airlines logo. You still see kamon on formal kimono and on a shop’s noren curtain, where a master’s crest could once be passed to a trusted apprentice.

New crests keep appearing. Kaemon are informal variants, and onnamon are crests a woman makes after marriage from elements of her birth family’s design.

Japanese Symbols as Tattoos

Traditional Japanese tattooing, irezumi, has a settled vocabulary of its own: the dragon for benevolent power, the koi for perseverance, the peony for courage, and waves and wind bars to tie a piece together. Our guide to Japanese tattoo meanings goes through the motifs one by one, and the hannya mask has a page of its own because it is the face most often misread.

For lettering, the kanji rules above apply. One character reads like a label, simplified Chinese forms are not Japanese, and a single stroke can change the word: 大 (big) becomes 犬 (dog) with one extra mark. Try a word in several brush styles with the Japanese tattoo generator. For your own name, write it in katakana, because names are not translated into kanji.

Sources and Further Reading

• National Flag and Anthem, JapanGov the 1999 law, 2 to 3 proportions, three-fifths sun
• Circulating Coin Designs, Japan Mint cherry, chrysanthemum, paulownia, bamboo
• The Chrysanthemum, Nippon.com Go-Toba, the 16-petal crest, funeral use
• Kamon: Japan's Family Crests, Nippon.com 20,000 to 25,000 crests, the five most common
• 日本政府の紋「五七の桐」, Toyo Keizai the government paulownia crest
• Three Friends of Winter, Kyoto National Museum pine, bamboo, plum
• Value of Mt. Fuji, Fujisan World Cultural Heritage Council 3,776 meters, June 2013
• Fujisan, Japan National Tourism Organization Hokusai and Hiroshige
• Fortune Beckons, Nippon.com maneki-neko paws and colors
• Fushimi Inari Taisha some thirty thousand Inari shrines
• Torii, Encyclopedia of Shinto structure and etymology
• Shimenawa, Encyclopedia of Shinto sacred ropes and shide
• Ema, Encyclopedia of Shinto from horses to plaques
• Tokyo Shrine Crests, tsunagu Japan mitsudomoe and Hachiman
• Circle of Buddhist enlightenment (enso), Asian Art Museum the enso
• 常用漢字表, Agency for Cultural Affairs 2,136 characters, 2010
• Setsubun, Nippon.com "fuku wa uchi"

FAQ

What is the most famous Japanese symbol?

The red sun disc of the Hinomaru, Japan’s flag, is the most recognized Japanese symbol, followed by the cherry blossom, Mount Fuji, and the torii gate. The flag’s name means circle of the sun, and it became the legal national flag in 1999. Among the symbols people give each other, the crane is the one most often folded, embroidered, and sent.

What Japanese symbol means strength?

The kanji for strength is 力 (chikara), two strokes that mean physical power and inner force. 強 (tsuyoi) means strong as a quality. Among motifs, the tiger and the dragon stand for strength and courage, and the koi stands for the strength to keep going against the current.

What is the Japanese symbol for good luck?

The kanji 福 (fuku) means good fortune, and 吉 (kichi) marks a lucky omikuji fortune, with 大吉 (daikichi) the best of all. As objects, the maneki-neko, the daruma, the crane, and the pine, bamboo, and plum trio are all luck symbols, and an omamori carries protection for one purpose.

What is the Japanese symbol for love?

The kanji for love is 愛 (ai), deep and caring love, with the heart 心 inside it. 恋 (koi) is romantic longing. Simplified Chinese writes love as 爱, which drops the heart, and that form is not Japanese. As a motif, the crane stands for lifelong love because it keeps one partner.

What does the red circle mean in Japan?

On the flag, the red circle is the sun. Japan’s own name, 日本, means the origin of the sun, and Hinomaru means circle of the sun. The image is so familiar that a lunch box of white rice with one red pickled plum in the middle is called a hinomaru bento.

Are Japanese and Chinese symbols the same?

Partly. Japanese kanji came from Chinese characters, and many match traditional Chinese exactly, such as 愛 and 龍. But mainland China uses simplified forms, like 爱 and 龙, that Japanese does not, and Japan made its own simplifications, like 竜. Japan’s everyday list has 2,136 characters. Confirm that a design is Japanese before you use it.