God in Japanese

God in Japanese is 神, said kami. Nine strokes: the altar radical 礻 on the left and 申 on the right, which began as a picture of lightning. The one word covers the countless kami of Shinto and the single God of Christianity alike. Written in hiragana it is かみ, and in katakana カミ.

God in Japanese

God in Japanese is 神, and you can hear it used three different ways in a single afternoon.

At a small neighbourhood shrine, an old man drops a coin in the offering box, bows twice, claps twice, bows once more, and asks 神様 (kamisama) to look after his granddaughter’s exams. Across town, in a Sunday service, a pastor reads from Genesis, and the word for God in his Bible is the same 神. And on the train home, a teenager watches a goalkeeper’s impossible save, types 神 under the clip, and means “amazing.”

Same character, three registers. The first is Shinto, the native tradition of kami, the sacred presences in mountains, rivers and ancestors. The second is the God of the monotheistic religions, which Japanese borrowed the same word to name. The third is slang, and it is everywhere.

Kami Meaning

Kami (神) means a god or deity, a being worshipped or held in awe. In hiragana it is かみ, in katakana カミ, and it is said “kah-mee,” two even beats. Add the respectful suffix and you get 神様 (kamisama), the way most people actually say it aloud. Saying 神 bare can sound abstract or literary. 神様 sounds like someone you might talk to.

In Shinto, kami is a very wide net. The eighteenth-century scholar Motoori Norinaga described kami as anything with extraordinary power that inspires awe, gods of the old myths but also people, animals, trees, mountains and the sea, harmful as well as good. His definition is still the one most often quoted. It is why Japanese can speak of 八百万の神 (yaoyorozu no kami), eight million kami, meaning too many to count.

For the God of Christianity and Islam, Japanese uses the same word, and context does the work a capital letter does in English: 神を信じる (kami o shinjiru), to believe in God. That choice was made in the Meiji era, when American missionaries brought over a Chinese Bible that had translated God as 神, and Japanese translations followed it. The 1888 Japanese Old Testament opens with 神 creating heaven and earth.

Two things kami is not. It is not a Buddha, which is 仏 (hotoke); shrines are for kami and temples are for buddhas, and the pair together is 神仏 (shinbutsu). And it is not 上 (kami, above), despite a theory that held for centuries. Studies of Old Japanese sounds showed the two words had different vowels, so the neat story that gods are simply “the ones above” does not hold. Nor is it 紙 (paper) or 髪 (hair), though all of these are pronounced kami today.

The Kanji for God: 神

• Character: 神
• On’yomi: シン (shin), ジン (jin)
• Kun’yomi: かみ (kami), and in compounds かん (kan) and こう (kou)
• Stroke count: 9
• General meaning: god, deity, the divine; also spirit and mind
• Radical: 示 (altar), Kangxi radical 113, written 礻 on the left and called しめすへん (shimesuhen)

It is taught in the third year of Japanese primary school. The Jōyō table also lists a traditional form, drawn with the full altar 示 on the left instead of the narrow 礻, ten strokes instead of nine. You will meet that older shape in printing from before the post-war script reform.

Japanese Symbol for God

神 is built from two pictures, and both are worth knowing.

The left side, 礻, is a compressed form of 示, an altar or offering table. It marks characters about the sacred and about ritual: 社 (yashiro, a shrine, the second half of 神社), 祈 (inoru, to pray), 祝 (iwau, to celebrate), 礼 (rei, a bow or rite), 福 (fuku, good fortune). If a character has this narrow altar on its left, something is being offered or asked for.

The right side, 申, is older than it looks. In the earliest forms it is a picture of lightning, a jagged flash splitting the sky, and early bronze inscriptions used 申 alone to mean a god. The altar was added later to make the sacred meaning explicit, while 申 itself drifted into other jobs, such as 申す (mousu), to say humbly. So 神 is lightning at an altar: power from the sky, received with offerings.

Japanese keeps the same link in its ordinary word for thunder. 雷 is read kaminari, usually explained as 神鳴り, the god roaring.

How to Write 神 in Japanese

Nine strokes: the altar radical in four, then 申 in five.

For 礻, start with the short dot at the top. Then a horizontal that turns sharply into a sweep down to the left, like a small フ. Then the vertical dropping straight down through the middle. Then a short dot to the right of that vertical. Four strokes, tall and narrow.

For 申, write the box first: the left vertical, then the stroke that crosses the top and turns down the right side. Then the middle horizontal, then the bottom horizontal that closes it. The long vertical goes last, starting above the box and dropping through both horizontals to finish well below it.

Watch the radical. 礻 (altar, four strokes) and 衤 (clothing, five strokes) differ by a single short stroke, and 袖 (sode, a sleeve) looks very close to 神 at a glance. If your left side has two short marks beside the vertical instead of one, you have written clothing, not god.

How to Say God in Japanese

Kami is two even beats, “kah-mee,” with an open a and a short i. Kamisama adds two more beats, ka-mi-sa-ma, all flat. In compounds you hear the on’yomi shin in 神道 (Shintou) and jin in 神社 (jinja), and the old combining form kan in 神主 (kannushi), a Shinto priest.

Real sentences:

• 神様、お願いします。(Kamisama, onegai shimasu.) Please, God. (A prayer, or a plea before an exam.)
• 神を信じますか。(Kami o shinjimasu ka.) Do you believe in God?
• 神社にお参りに行きます。(Jinja ni omairi ni ikimasu.) I’m going to visit the shrine.
• 日本には八百万の神がいる。(Nihon ni wa yaoyorozu no kami ga iru.) Japan has eight million gods.
• 今の対応、神だった。(Ima no taiou, kami datta.) The way they handled that was amazing.

That last one is current Japanese. Dictionaries now list 神 as slang for anything outstanding.

Words and Compounds With 神

Notice 精神 and 神経. In these, 神 is not a god at all but the mind or spirit, an older sense the character brought from Chinese. 神経 is literally the channel of the spirit, the word chosen in the eighteenth century for the nerves.

And 神対応 has an opposite: 塩対応 (shio taiou), a salty response, the curt and cold treatment.

The calendar has a famous kami word too. The tenth month of the old lunar calendar is 神無月 (kannazuki), popularly the month without gods, because every kami was said to leave for 出雲大社 (Izumo Taisha), where the same month is called 神在月 (kamiarizuki). Dictionaries prefer a plainer origin, the month of the gods, but the Izumo story is the one people tell.

God in Japanese Culture

For what kami are and how Shinto treats them, start with kami. For the major figures, from the sun goddess to the rice god, our guide to Japanese gods and goddesses profiles fifteen of them with their shrines. The best known are Amaterasu, the sun goddess at Ise; Inari, god of rice and business, served by foxes; and Raijin, the thunder god in his ring of drums.

What ties them together is place. A kami is usually somewhere: a mountain, a waterfall, an old tree wrapped in a twisted straw rope, a shrine behind a torii. You visit a god in Japan the way you visit a person, by going to where they live, rinsing your hands at the entrance, and saying why you came.

That is also why the word stretches so easily into slang. Anything that inspires awe can be 神, the old cedar at the shrine and the goalkeeper’s save alike.

As a Tattoo

神 is a strong, popular single character, and it reads as intended: god, the divine. It is not offensive, and Japanese readers see it often in shrine names and in fiction.

Know the range of what it says, though. To an older reader it means god, plainly. To many younger readers it also carries the slang sense of “godlike” or “amazing,” so a lone 神 on a forearm can read a little like a boast. And it does not specify which god. If you mean the God of a particular faith, a Japanese reader will not assume that from 神 alone.

Check pairings carefully. 死神 (shinigami) is a death god, popular in manga and blunt everywhere else. 神経 is a nerve and 精神 is the mind. Kanji set side by side form dictionary words, not a sum of ideas.

On script: 神 is written the same way in Japanese and in both simplified and traditional Chinese, and read shén in Mandarin. The only form choice is Japanese: the modern character with the narrow altar 礻, or the old form with the full 示 on the left. Modern Japanese uses the first. Check the left side above all, because 礻 and the clothing radical 衤 differ by one short stroke.

Nine strokes with a long central vertical suits a vertical placement on the spine or forearm. Keep the box of 申 open so the two horizontals stay separate.

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

• Soul in Japanese
• Lightning in Japanese
• Sun in Japanese
• Dragon in Japanese
• Demon in Japanese
• Fox in Japanese
• Angel in Japanese

For more characters tied to the sacred and the natural world, browse the kanji library.

Sources and Further Reading

• 常用漢字表 (Jōyō Kanji Table, 2010), Agency for Cultural Affairs the readings シン, ジン, かみ, かん and こう, and the bracketed traditional form
• 神 in KANJIDIC2, WWWJDIC, Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group nine strokes, radical 113 and third-grade status
• 神, Digital Daijisen, Nihon Kokugo Daijiten and Jitsū (Kotobank) the senses of kami including the slang 神対応, the Chinese Bible behind the Meiji translation of God, and the ten-stroke traditional form
• 申, Jitsū (Kotobank) 申 as a pictograph of lightning and the original form of 神 in bronze inscriptions
• Kami: Definitions and Typology, Encyclopedia of Shinto, Kokugakuin University Motoori Norinaga's definition and why kami is not the same word as kami, above

FAQ

How do you say god in Japanese?

You say kami, written 神, or more respectfully 神様 (kamisama), which is how most people say it aloud. Two even beats, “kah-mee.” The same word is used for the kami of Shinto and for the God of Christianity. In compounds the character is read shin or jin, as in 神社 (jinja, a shrine).

What is the kanji for god?

The kanji for god is 神, nine strokes. The left side is 礻, the altar radical, Kangxi number 113, and the right side is 申, which began as a picture of lightning. Its readings are かみ (kami), シン (shin), and ジン (jin), and it is taught in third grade.

What is the difference between kami and kamisama?

They are the same word. 神様 adds the respectful suffix 様 (sama) to 神, and it is the natural way to speak of or to a god in conversation: 神様、お願いします, please, God. 神 on its own sounds more abstract and appears in writing, compounds, and set phrases.

What does 神 mean in Japanese slang?

In casual Japanese, 神 means amazing or godlike, said of a person, a play, a game, or a moment of service. 神対応 (kami taiou), a godlike response, is now in standard dictionaries. Its opposite is 塩対応 (shio taiou), a salty, curt response.

Is the Japanese word kami related to kami, above?

No. The idea that gods are called kami because they are above, 上, was popular for centuries. Studies of Old Japanese pronunciation showed the two words had different vowels, so they are now treated as separate words that later came to sound the same.

Is 神 the same character in Chinese?

Yes. Simplified and traditional Chinese both write 神, and it is read shén in Mandarin. Japanese also has an older ten-stroke form with the full altar 示 on the left, seen in printing from before the post-war script reform. For a modern Japanese tattoo, use 神 with the narrow 礻.