Family in Japanese

Family in Japanese is 家族, said kazoku. Two kanji: 家 (house), ten strokes under the roof radical 宀, and 族 (clan), eleven strokes under 方. The word means the people you live with and the relatives you count as your own. Written in hiragana it is かぞく, and in katakana カゾク.

Family in Japanese

Ask a Japanese coworker on a Monday morning what they did at the weekend, and a tired parent may answer with one phrase: 家族サービス (kazoku saabisu), family service. It means the Sunday handed over to the zoo, the shopping mall and the grandparents’ house. It is half a joke and half a confession, and it starts with the word you came for.

家族 (kazoku) is family. You use it for your own family and for families in general, in a census form or a news report.

In conversation, though, people rarely say 私の家族 (watashi no kazoku), my family. They say うち (uchi), home, or うちの家族 (uchi no kazoku), the family at my house. And when they ask about yours, they add a polite ご: ご家族はお元気ですか (go-kazoku wa o-genki desu ka), is your family well?

Kazoku Meaning

Kazoku (家族) means family: the people bound to you by birth, marriage or adoption, usually the ones you share a home with. In hiragana it is かぞく, in katakana カゾク, and it is said “kah-zoh-koo,” three even beats with the final u whispered.

Japanese has a few neighbours for it, and each one stands somewhere slightly different.

• 家庭 (katei) is the household as a place and a way of life. 家庭料理 (katei ryouri) is home cooking.
• 一家 (ikka) is a whole household seen from outside. 田中一家 (Tanaka ikka) is the Tanaka family, all of them.
• 親戚 (shinseki) is relatives, the aunts and cousins you see at weddings and funerals.
• 身内 (miuchi), literally inside the body, is your own people, close kin, and sometimes your team.

Then there is ファミリー (famirii), the English word borrowed whole. It lives mostly in names: a family restaurant is a ファミレス (famiresu).

The members of a family come in two sets, and that is the part that catches learners. Talking about your own family to someone outside it, you use plain words: 父 (chichi, my father), 母 (haha, my mother). Talking to them, or about someone else’s, you use the polite forms: お父さん (otousan), お母さん (okaasan). The same split runs through brothers, sisters and grandparents.

The Kanji for Family: 家族

• Character: 家
• On’yomi: カ (ka), ケ (ke)
• Kun’yomi: いえ (ie), や (ya)
• Stroke count: 10
• General meaning: house, home, family, household; as a suffix, a professional
• Radical: 宀 (roof), Kangxi radical 40

And the second half of the word:

• Character: 族
• On’yomi: ゾク (zoku)
• Kun’yomi: none in the Jōyō table
• Stroke count: 11
• General meaning: clan, tribe, family, a group of the same kind
• Radical: 方 (direction, square), Kangxi radical 70

家 is taught in the second year of Japanese primary school and 族 in the third. In everyday writing 家 is also read うち (uchi), as in うちの家, a reading dictionaries give but the official Jōyō table leaves out.

Japanese Symbol for Family

家 is a roof with an animal under it. The top is 宀, the roof radical found in 安 (an, peace) and 宿 (yado, an inn). The bottom is 豕 (shi), a pig.

A pig under a roof sounds like a farmyard, and the origin has been argued over for a very long time. In the oldest inscriptions, the oracle bones of ancient China, the character seems to have named a sacred building purified with an animal offering, the innermost room where ancestors were honoured. The house began as a place of ritual before it was a place to sleep.

族 is built differently. Its upper left is the banner shape it shares with 旗 (hata, flag) and 旅 (tabi, travel), and underneath sits 矢 (ya), an arrow. People gathered under one flag is a fair way to picture it, and the meaning follows: a clan, a tribe, a group that belongs together. 民族 (minzoku) is an ethnic group. 貴族 (kizoku) is the aristocracy.

Put them together and 家族 is the house and the clan, the people under one roof and the line they belong to.

家 has a second life as a suffix for a professional: 作家 (sakka), a writer, 画家 (gaka), a painter, 専門家 (senmonka), a specialist.

How to Write 家族 in Japanese

Twenty-one strokes across the two characters.

家 takes ten. The roof 宀 comes first, in three: the short dot on top, the small stroke at the left, then the stroke that runs across and turns down at the right with a hook. Then the pig 豕 in seven. Write the horizontal, then a short stroke falling left beneath it, then the long curving stroke that drops through the middle and hooks at its foot. Three more strokes fall to the left, and the long sweep down to the right comes last.

族 takes eleven. Begin with 方 on the left in four strokes: the dot, the horizontal, the stroke that turns down and hooks, and the stroke falling left. Then the small banner shape at the upper right, a short slant and a short horizontal. Then 矢 in five: a short slant, two horizontals, the long stroke falling left and the sweep to the right.

The trap in 家 is the middle of the pig. Those three left-falling strokes need to fan out, not stack in parallel, or the bottom of the character turns into a smudge.

How to Say Family in Japanese

Kazoku is three even beats, “kah-zoh-koo,” with no stress on any of them. The last u is so light that it often disappears, so you hear something close to “kah-zohk.” Ie, the native word for house, is two beats, “ee-eh.”

Real sentences:

• 私の家族は四人です。(Watashi no kazoku wa yonin desu.) There are four people in my family.
• うちは五人家族です。(Uchi wa gonin kazoku desu.) We are a family of five.
• ご家族は何人ですか。(Go-kazoku wa nannin desu ka.) How many people are in your family?
• 週末は家族と過ごします。(Shuumatsu wa kazoku to sugoshimasu.) I spend weekends with my family.
• 家族みんな元気です。(Kazoku minna genki desu.) Everyone in my family is well.

Notice the second one. Japanese counts a family the way it counts people at a table: 四人家族 (yonin kazoku) is a family of four, and it is the usual way to answer how big your family is.

Words and Compounds With 家 and 族

実家 is the one you will hear most. It is your parents’ house, the home you return to, and 実家に帰る (jikka ni kaeru), going back to the family home, is what half the country does in the summer and at New Year.

本家 and 分家 come from the old household system, where the main house passed down the eldest line and younger sons set up branch houses. Old families still use both words.

Family in Japanese Culture

For half a century, Japanese law had its own definition of family. The Meiji Civil Code, in force from 1898, organized every household as an ie (家), a house registered as one unit under a head, the 戸主 (koshu). The head controlled the household, and the headship passed, in principle, to the eldest son. In that law, 家族 was a technical term: every member of the house except its head.

The postwar Civil Code of 1947 deleted the household system entirely and rewrote the family register, the 戸籍 (koseki), at the same time. The ie as a law was gone. The ie as an idea has been slower to leave. You can still see it in a family grave with one surname carved on the front, in the 本家 that hosts the New Year visit, and in the legal rule that a married couple shares a single surname, which our guide to Japanese surnames explains.

The shape of the family has changed fast. In the 2020 census, 38.1% of Japan’s private households were one person living alone, more than the 25.1% made up of a couple with children, and the average household held 2.21 people. The big multi-generation house of old photographs is now the exception.

The gatherings hold on. In mid-August, during Obon, families go back to the 実家, clean the graves and welcome the ancestors home for a few days, and the expressways jam for it. The ancestors are counted as family too.

As a Tattoo

家族 on skin says “family,” clearly and without poetry, the way the word would read on a form. That is not a problem. Japanese readers recognize it instantly, and it carries no odd second meaning.

Watch 家 on its own. It reads as house or home, and it is also the suffix that makes 作家 and 画家, so a single 家 can look like half a word. If you want one character, 家 is honest but plain.

Check pairings carefully. 家畜 (kachiku) means livestock, and 家出 (iede) means running away from home. Kanji set side by side form dictionary words, not a sum of ideas. If the feeling you want is the bond rather than the household, 絆 (kizuna), a bond between people, is the word Japanese reaches for.

On script: Japanese, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese all write 家族 with the same characters. The meaning drifts, though. In Mandarin, 家族 (jiāzú) leans toward the wider clan or a family line, and the everyday word for your family is 家 or 家人.

Twenty-one strokes across two characters is comfortable at a modest size, but give the pig in 家 enough room for its three falling strokes to stay apart.

Confirm with a native speaker before you ink. You can preview the characters in vertical and horizontal layouts with the Japanese Tattoo Generator, and read the wider background in our guide to japanese tattoo meanings.

Related Kanji

• Person in Japanese
• Heart in Japanese
• Blood in Japanese
• Life in Japanese
• Book in Japanese
• Grandma in Japanese
• Grandpa in Japanese

For more characters about the people around you, browse the kanji library.

Sources and Further Reading

• 常用漢字表 (Jōyō Kanji Table, 2010), Agency for Cultural Affairs the official readings カ, ケ, いえ and や for 家, ゾク for 族, and 家族 as an example word
• 家 in KANJIDIC2, WWWJDIC, Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group ten strokes, radical 40 and second-grade status
• 家, Digital Daijisen and Heibonsha World Encyclopedia (Kotobank) the readings including うち, the professional suffix, and the roof and pig form with its sacrificial origin
• 家族, Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, Digital Daijisen and Nipponica (Kotobank) the legal meaning of 家族 under the old Civil Code, the 1898 Meiji Civil Code and its 1947 revision
• 令和2年国勢調査 人口等基本集計 結果の概要, Statistics Bureau of Japan one-person households at 38.1%, couples with children at 25.1%, and 2.21 people per household in 2020

FAQ

How do you say family in Japanese?

You say kazoku, written 家族, three even beats: “kah-zoh-koo.” It covers your own family and families in general. In casual talk people often say うち (uchi), home, for my family, and they add a polite ご to say ご家族 (go-kazoku) when they mean someone else’s.

What is the kanji for family?

Family is written with two kanji, 家族. 家 means house or home, ten strokes under the roof radical 宀, and 族 means clan or tribe, eleven strokes under 方. 家 is a second-grade character and 族 a third-grade one. Together they read kazoku.

How do you say “my family” in Japanese?

The natural phrase is うちの家族 (uchi no kazoku), or simply うち. 私の家族 (watashi no kazoku) is correct but sounds a little stiff in conversation. To say how many you are, use the counting pattern: うちは四人家族です, we are a family of four.

What is the Japanese symbol for family?

In writing, 家族. The first character, 家, shows a pig under a roof, which in the oldest inscriptions marked a sacred building made holy by an animal offering. Many people who want a single symbol choose 家, but alone it reads as house or home, so 家族 is clearer.

What was the ie system in Japan?

The ie (家) system was the household structure written into the Meiji Civil Code from 1898. Each house was a registered unit under a head, the koshu, and the headship normally passed to the eldest son. Every other member was legally its 家族. The postwar Civil Code of 1947 abolished the system.

Is 家族 the same in Chinese?

The characters are the same in Japanese and in both simplified and traditional Chinese. The meaning is not quite. In Japanese, 家族 is the everyday word for family. In Mandarin, 家族 (jiāzú) leans toward the wider clan or a family line, and people usually say 家 or 家人 for their own family.