Night in Japanese is 夜, said yoru. Eight strokes, built on 夕, the evening radical, with a phonetic element wrapped around it. It means the hours after dark, plainly and without poetry. Written in hiragana it is よる, and in katakana ヨル.
Night in Japanese
Night in Japanese is 夜, and the spoken word is yoru. That is the word you use in conversation: 夜は寒い, nights are cold. The same character has a shorter reading, yo, which appears inside older and more compact words like 月夜 (tsukiyo, a moonlit night) and 夜中 (yonaka, the middle of the night).
The on’yomi ヤ (ya) does the formal work. 夜間 (yakan) is nighttime on a sign or a timetable. 深夜 (shin’ya) is the small hours. 徹夜 (tetsuya) is the all-nighter every student knows.
The Kanji for Night: 夜
- Character: 夜
- On’yomi: ヤ (ya)
- Kun’yomi: よる (yoru), よ (yo)
- Stroke count: 8
- General meaning: night, evening, the hours of darkness
- Radical: 夕 (evening), Kangxi radical 36, with five strokes added
It is taught in the second year of Japanese primary school and sits at JLPT N4. Children learn it alongside 朝 (asa, morning) and 昼 (hiru, daytime).
Japanese Symbol for Night
夜 is a phono-semantic compound, and only half of it is about darkness.
The meaning comes from 夕, tucked into the lower right of the character. 夕 is a pictogram of the moon with one stroke fewer than 月, and it means dusk or evening. You will find it in 夕方 (yuugata, early evening) and in 名 (na, name), where it is doing a different old job entirely.
Everything else in 夜 descends from 亦, which supplied the pronunciation rather than the sense. Bronze and seal forms show the two elements more clearly than the modern shape does. By the time the character settled into its printed form, the phonetic half had been stretched into the top stroke, the horizontal bar, and the long sweeping stroke on the right, and 夕 had been squeezed in underneath.
So the honest account is: a moon element for meaning, an old sound element for everything else. The picture is a crescent hiding inside a shape that no longer explains itself.
How to Write 夜 in Japanese
Eight strokes, and the order runs top to bottom, then left to right, which is the usual sequence for a character with a lid on it.
Start with the short dot at the top. Then the horizontal bar beneath it. Then two strokes on the left: a downward-left sweep, then a short vertical beside it. Now the 夕 element in the lower middle: the left-falling stroke first, then the curving stroke that turns and hooks, then the short dot inside it. Finally the long right-falling sweep that runs out to the lower right and finishes the character.
That last stroke is the one that carries the balance. Let it travel. A short, timid final sweep makes 夜 look cramped and lopsided, because the whole right side of the character is leaning on it.
How to Say Night in Japanese
Yoru is two even beats: “yoh-roo.” The o is short as in “or,” the u is short and lightly rounded, and the r is the soft Japanese tap that sits between an English r and d. No stress on either syllable.
Real sentences:
- 夜は静かです。(Yoru wa shizuka desu.) Nights are quiet.
- 今夜は月がきれいですね。(Kon’ya wa tsuki ga kirei desu ne.) The moon is beautiful tonight, isn’t it.
- 夜遅くまで働きました。(Yoru osoku made hatarakimashita.) I worked until late at night.
- 昨日は徹夜でした。(Kinou wa tetsuya deshita.) I pulled an all-nighter yesterday.
- 夜景を見に行きませんか。(Yakei o mi ni ikimasen ka.) Shall we go see the night view?
Words and Compounds With 夜
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 今夜 | kon’ya | tonight |
| 夜中 | yonaka | the middle of the night |
| 深夜 | shin’ya | the small hours, late night |
| 徹夜 | tetsuya | staying up all night |
| 夜明け | yoake | dawn, daybreak |
| 夜景 | yakei | a night view |
| 夜桜 | yozakura | cherry blossoms at night |
| 夜市 | yoichi | a night market |
Two more are worth knowing for different reasons. 通夜 (tsuya) is the wake held the night before a Japanese funeral, and it is a word you would not want to meet by accident. And 夜行 (yakou) means travelling by night, which gives 夜行バス (yakou basu), the overnight coach that generations of students have slept badly on between Tokyo and Osaka.
Night in Japanese Culture
Japanese has a habit of naming things that happen only after dark, and treating them as separate experiences rather than the daytime version with the lights off.
Tsukimi, moon viewing, is the clearest case. On the night of the harvest moon, households set out rice dumplings and susuki grass and simply look up. It is a formal seasonal observance with a fixed date, food, and decorations, and the whole content of it is the night sky.
Blossom gets the same treatment. 夜桜 (yozakura) is cherry blossom viewed at night under lanterns or floodlights, and parks across Japan light their trees specifically for it. It is not a lesser version of daytime hanami. It has its own word.
Even the view of a city counts. 夜景 (yakei) is a category of tourism, and Nagasaki, Kobe, and Hakodate have long been grouped as the 日本三大夜景, the three great night views of Japan, each reached by a ropeway up a mountain that exists mostly so people can look down at the lights.
Then there is the darker register. 百鬼夜行 (hyakki yagyou), the night parade of a hundred demons, is the procession of yokai said to move through the streets after dark, painted on Muromachi-period handscrolls and still borrowed by anime and games today. Night in Japan has always been when the other things come out.
As a Tattoo
夜 is an underrated tattoo character. Eight strokes give it enough weight to hold ink without crowding, and the long final sweep to the lower right creates real movement, the sort of diagonal that brush styles are built to show off.
Know what it says. 夜 means night, the time of day. It does not carry the borrowed English associations of darkness as mystery or rebellion. A Japanese reader sees the word from a train timetable, warmly and neutrally. If darkness as a quality is the idea, that is a different character, and if a moonlit night specifically is the idea, 月夜 (tsukiyo) says it in two.
Check what you pair it with. 通夜 (tsuya) is a funeral wake, and 夜逃げ (yonige) means fleeing your creditors under cover of darkness. Both are built from 夜 plus an ordinary-looking character. Kanji sitting side by side form real dictionary words rather than a sum of ideas, so run any combination past someone who reads Japanese.
On script: 夜 is written identically in Japanese, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese, so there is no form to choose between. Only the sound changes, yoru or ya in Japanese and yè in Mandarin.
The character sits well vertically, which makes it a natural partner for a second kanji stacked above or below it on the spine or the outer forearm. Give the final sweep clear space. If it collides with a border or another element, the whole character loses its balance.
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 night in Japanese?
You say yoru, written 夜. Two flat beats, “yoh-roo,” with no stress on either and a soft tapped r. For tonight specifically, say 今夜 (kon’ya). In compounds the character takes its on’yomi ya, as in 深夜 (shin’ya, the small hours) and 夜間 (yakan, nighttime).
What is the kanji for night?
The kanji for night is 夜, eight strokes, built on 夕, the evening radical, Kangxi number 36. The rest of the character descends from 亦, which supplied the pronunciation rather than the meaning. Readings are よる (yoru), よ (yo), and ヤ (ya). It is taught in second grade.
What is the Japanese symbol for night?
夜 is the written symbol, and the moon element 夕 hidden in its lower right is the part that means darkness. The visual symbol of night in Japanese art is the moon itself, 月 (tsuki), which is why moon viewing has a festival and night as an abstract idea does not.
How do you write yoru in Japanese?
Three ways, all correct. 夜 is the kanji and the standard written form. よる is hiragana, common in children’s books and song lyrics. ヨル is katakana, which gives the word a stylized modern feel and turns up in band names and game titles. All three are pronounced the same.
Is 夜 the same character in Chinese?
Yes. Simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and Japanese all write it as 夜, with no variant forms to choose between, and it means night in both languages. Only the sound changes, yoru or ya in Japanese and yè in Mandarin. That makes it a safe character to copy from a reference image.
What is yozakura?
夜桜 (yozakura) is cherry blossom viewed at night. Parks and temple grounds across Japan light their trees with lanterns or floodlights during the short blooming season, and the pale petals against a black sky look nothing like the daytime version. It is treated as its own tradition, not an after-hours substitute.