Blood in Japanese is 血, said chi. Six strokes, and it is Kangxi radical 143 in its own right, originally a drop of blood drawn above a sacrificial bowl. It covers the liquid and the lineage, exactly as English does. Written in hiragana it is ち, and in katakana チ.
Blood in Japanese
Blood in Japanese is 血, and the spoken word is chi. One syllable, and it works for a cut finger, a crime scene, or a family line. The on’yomi ケツ (ketsu) takes over inside compounds, which is where you meet the character most often: 血液 (ketsueki, blood as a substance), 血圧 (ketsuatsu, blood pressure), 出血 (shukketsu, bleeding).
In a hospital you will hear ketsu words all day. In a kitchen, when someone nicks a thumb, you hear 血.
The Kanji for Blood: 血
- Character: 血
- On’yomi: ケツ (ketsu)
- Kun’yomi: ち (chi)
- Stroke count: 6
- General meaning: blood, and by extension lineage, descent, and passion
- Radical: 血 is itself a radical, Kangxi number 143, with no strokes added
It is taught in the third year of Japanese primary school and sits at JLPT N2, which is a little higher than its everyday frequency would suggest.
Japanese Symbol for Blood
血 is an ideogrammic compound, and unusually for a kanji, the picture inside it is still legible.
The bottom five strokes are 皿 (sara), a shallow open vessel, the same element that sits under 盆 (bon, a tray) and 盛 (moru, to heap up). The short stroke slanting across the top is a single drop falling into it. Blood in a bowl, and specifically ritual blood: the character comes from ancient sacrificial practice, where the blood of an animal was collected in a vessel as an offering.
That origin is why 血 is a radical at all. Characters built on it are scarce, but one of them is common: 衆 (shuu), meaning a crowd or the masses, which turns up in 民衆 (minshuu, the populace) and 観衆 (kanshuu, spectators). The link between blood and a multitude of people is old and no longer obvious, but the classification survives.
How to Write 血 in Japanese
Six strokes, top before bottom, and the vessel is written the way any open box is written.
Start with the short stroke at the top left, slanting down and to the left. That is the drop. Then the vessel in five. The left vertical comes down first. The second stroke runs across the top and turns down the right side in one movement. Then the two short verticals inside, left before right. The long horizontal at the bottom comes last and closes everything.
Keep the bottom stroke wide, wider than the top of the vessel. A 血 with a narrow base tips over visually, and the two inner verticals need clear air on either side of them or the character fills in as a solid block.
How to Say Blood in Japanese
Chi is one short beat, and it sounds like the “chee” in “cheese” but clipped, without the long English vowel. The whole word is over quickly. In compounds the sound changes to ketsu, “keh-tsoo,” with that final u barely voiced, and it often doubles the following consonant: 血圧 comes out as ketsuatsu, but 血管 comes out as kekkan.
Real sentences:
- 指から血が出ています。(Yubi kara chi ga dete imasu.) My finger is bleeding.
- 血が止まりません。(Chi ga tomarimasen.) The bleeding won’t stop.
- 血液型は何ですか。(Ketsuekigata wa nan desu ka.) What is your blood type?
- 彼は父親の血を引いている。(Kare wa chichioya no chi o hiite iru.) He takes after his father.
- 献血に行きました。(Kenketsu ni ikimashita.) I went to donate blood.
That fourth sentence is the useful one. 血を引く, to draw blood, means to inherit a trait or a line, and it is completely ordinary in speech.
Words and Compounds With 血
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 血液 | ketsueki | blood, as a substance |
| 血液型 | ketsuekigata | blood type |
| 血圧 | ketsuatsu | blood pressure |
| 出血 | shukketsu | bleeding, hemorrhage |
| 貧血 | hinketsu | anemia |
| 献血 | kenketsu | blood donation |
| 血筋 | chisuji | lineage, descent |
| 血縁 | ketsuen | blood relation, consanguinity |
Two more carry feeling rather than biology. 熱血 (nekketsu) is hot blood, meaning zeal, and 熱血漢 is the earnest, shouting, big-hearted character type that anime runs on. And 鼻血 (hanaji) is a nosebleed, which shows the chi reading softening to ji when it follows another element.
Blood in Japanese Culture
Japan’s most visible blood custom has nothing to do with medicine. 血液型性格分類 (ketsuekigata seikaku bunrui), blood type personality classification, is the widespread belief that A, B, O, and AB types map onto temperament. It was revived in the 1970s by Masahiko Nomi, a journalist with no medical training, and it spread through magazines, dating advice, and morning television.
It has no scientific support. Large studies find that blood type accounts for a negligible fraction of variation in personality, and the research community treats the idea as folk belief. It has real consequences anyway. The word ブラハラ (bura-hara), blood type harassment, exists because people have been passed over for jobs and dropped by partners over a letter on a form. You can see how the four types are actually described in Japan with our blood type personality tool.
The lineage sense runs deeper and older. 血筋 (chisuji) and 血縁 (ketsuen) carry weight in a culture with long family registers, and the phrase 血がつながっている, to be connected by blood, marks a boundary that adoption and marriage historically had to work around. Warrior families tracked descent through the same vocabulary, which is part of why samurai genealogies were recorded so carefully.
As a Tattoo
Start with the plain fact: 血 says blood. Not sacrifice, not bloodline as a noble abstraction, not passion. Blood, the substance. A Japanese reader looking at it on your arm will read the word you would see on a hospital sign.
That is the register problem, and it is worth taking seriously. Where 心 or 春 read as poetic, 血 reads as clinical or violent depending on context. It is not offensive and it is not taboo, but it is blunt, and almost nobody in Japan wears it as a standalone character. If the idea you want is family and descent, 血筋 (chisuji, lineage) or 家族 (kazoku, family) says that without the mess. If the idea is fierceness, 熱血 (nekketsu, hot-blooded) is closer to what people mean.
Check pairings carefully. 出血 is a hemorrhage and 貧血 is anemia. Both are ordinary medical words built on characters that look fine alone, and neither is what anyone intends. Kanji set side by side form dictionary words, not a sum of ideas.
On script: 血 is written identically in Japanese, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese, so there is no form to choose between. Only the sound changes, chi or ketsu in Japanese and xuè or xiě in Mandarin.
The shape works better small than most six-stroke characters because there is nothing fine in it, just an open vessel and a drop. Keep the interior gaps generous and it will still read in twenty years. Traditional Japanese tattooing, irezumi, rarely uses isolated characters at all, and an artist working in that tradition may push you toward imagery instead.
Confirm with a native speaker before you ink. You can preview the character in vertical and horizontal layouts with the Japanese Tattoo Generator, and read the wider background in our guide to japanese tattoo meanings.
Related Kanji
FAQ
How do you say blood in Japanese?
You say chi, written 血. One short beat, close to “chee” but clipped, with no long vowel. That is the word for blood you have spilled or blood in a family line. Inside compounds the character switches to its on’yomi ketsu, as in 血液 (ketsueki) and 血圧 (ketsuatsu, blood pressure).
What is the kanji for blood?
The kanji for blood is 血, six strokes, and it is Kangxi radical 143 in its own right. It combines 皿, a shallow vessel, with a single short stroke above representing a drop falling in. Its readings are ち (chi) and ケツ (ketsu), and it is taught in third grade.
What is the Japanese symbol for blood?
血 is the written symbol, and it still shows what it came from: sacrificial blood collected in an open bowl. Unlike most kanji, the picture survived the centuries of simplification largely intact. As a radical it heads a small family of characters, the most common being 衆 (shuu), a crowd.
How do you write chi in Japanese?
血 is the kanji. ち is hiragana and チ is katakana, and both are common, because chi is a short sound with many homophones: 血, 地 (ground), 知 (knowledge), 千 (thousand). Context or the kanji does the disambiguating. In writing about blood specifically, 血 is the standard form.
Is 血 the same character in Chinese?
Yes. Simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and Japanese all write it as 血, with no variant forms to choose between, and it is radical 143 in every system. The meaning matches too. Only the sound changes, chi or ketsu in Japanese and xuè or xiě in Mandarin.
Why do Japanese people ask about blood type?
Because of 血液型性格分類, the belief that blood type predicts personality, popularized in the 1970s by the journalist Masahiko Nomi. It appears in magazines, dating profiles, and horoscope segments. Science does not support it, and the term ブラハラ (bura-hara, blood type harassment) exists for the discrimination that follows from taking it seriously.