Rice in Japanese is 米, said kome. Six strokes, and it is Kangxi radical 119 in its own right, a picture of kernels on an ear of grain. 米 is rice as a crop and a raw ingredient. Once it is cooked it becomes ご飯 (gohan), which also means a meal. Written in hiragana kome is こめ, and in katakana コメ.
Rice in Japanese
Rice in Japanese is two words, and the one you need depends on whether the rice has been cooked yet.
米 (kome) is the grain. It is what a farmer grows and what you swirl in cold water before it goes into the cooker.
ご飯 (gohan) is what comes out of the cooker. It is cooked rice, steaming in a bowl, and it is also the word for a meal. 朝ご飯 (asagohan) is breakfast, 晩ご飯 (bangohan) is dinner, and ご飯できたよ, the rice is ready, is what a parent calls up the stairs whatever is actually being served.
That second meaning tells you how central rice is. When a friend texts ご飯食べた？ (gohan tabeta?), they are not asking about rice. They are asking whether you have eaten.
Kome and Gohan Meaning
Kome (米) means rice as a grain, harvested and husked but not yet cooked. In hiragana it is こめ, in katakana コメ, and it is said “koh-meh,” two short, even beats. In conversation people usually say お米 (okome), the way many Japanese food words take a polite お.
Kome comes in a few working kinds. 玄米 (genmai) is brown rice with only the husk removed. 白米 (hakumai) is polished white rice, the everyday kind. もち米 (mochigome) is the sticky glutinous rice pounded into mochi.
Gohan (ご飯) is cooked rice, and by extension any meal. The ご is an honorific prefix, the 御 that polishes many nouns, and 飯 on its own is read めし (meshi). Meshi is the blunt, casual version, the word in 飯行こう (meshi ikou), let’s go eat. Gohan is the neutral word you will hear from almost everyone, often written in plain hiragana, ごはん.
Then there is ライス (raisu), the English word borrowed whole. Restaurant menus use it for rice served on a flat plate beside Western-style food, as in カレーライス (karee raisu), curry rice. And the plant standing in the paddy is a fourth word again, 稲 (ine). Japanese names rice by the stage it is at.
The Kanji for Rice: 米
- Character: 米
- On’yomi: ベイ (bei), マイ (mai)
- Kun’yomi: こめ (kome); the older よね (yone) survives in names but is not on the Jōyō list
- Stroke count: 6
- General meaning: rice, grain; also America, and in older writing the metre
- Radical: 米 is itself a radical, Kangxi number 119, called こめへん (komehen) when it sits on the left of another character
It is taught in the second year of Japanese primary school. The character for cooked rice, 飯, is a much busier twelve strokes, built on the eating radical 食 beside 反.
Japanese Symbol for Rice
米 is a pictograph. The oldest forms show a single ear of grain with small dots, the kernels, scattered above and below it. The modern character keeps the plan: a cross for the stalk, two short strokes above, two sweeps below.
Japanese reads a second picture into the same six strokes. Take the two short strokes on top, the cross in the middle and the two sweeps at the bottom, and you can see 八 (upside down), 十 and 八: eight, ten, eight. That is why the eighty-eighth birthday is called 米寿 (beiju), the rice birthday. Children are also told that rice takes eighty-eight tasks to bring from seed to bowl. That is a folk saying rather than the etymology, but a good one.
As a radical, 米 sits on the left of characters about grain and what is made from it: 粉 (kona, flour), 粒 (tsubu, a grain or drop), 精 (sei, refined), 糖 (tou, sugar). It also hides inside 料, the first character of 料理 (ryouri, cooking), and inside 粋, the character for iki, the Edo ideal of effortless style.
How to Write 米 in Japanese
Six strokes, and the order follows the picture: the small kernels on top first, then the stalk, then the sweeps.
Stroke one is the short dot at the top left, slanting down toward the center. Stroke two is its partner on the right, slanting down and to the left toward the same point, so the pair lean in like eyebrows. Stroke three is the horizontal across the middle. Stroke four is the long vertical, dropping through the horizontal from top to bottom. Then the two sweeps leave the center: the left-falling stroke first, the right-falling stroke last.
Keep the top strokes small and aimed at the crossing. Add one more horizontal above the two short strokes and you have written 来 (rai, to come), a seven-stroke character with nothing to do with food.
How to Say Rice in Japanese
Kome is two even beats, “koh-meh,” with a short o and a short e as in “bed.” Neither beat takes stress. Gohan is three beats, go-ha-n, because the final n counts as a beat of its own: “goh-hahn,” with the h breathed lightly.
In compounds the character switches to its on’yomi: bei in 米国 (beikoku), mai in 白米 (hakumai).
Real sentences:
- お米を研いでください。(Okome o toide kudasai.) Please rinse the rice.
- ご飯を炊きました。(Gohan o takimashita.) I cooked the rice.
- ご飯食べた？ (Gohan tabeta?) Have you eaten?
- 晩ご飯は何？ (Bangohan wa nani?) What’s for dinner?
- 新米の季節ですね。(Shinmai no kisetsu desu ne.) It’s new-rice season, isn’t it?
Notice the verbs. Rice is not washed with the ordinary 洗う (arau). It is 研ぐ (togu), the same verb used for sharpening a knife on a whetstone, because you scrub the grains against each other. And in standard Tokyo Japanese, rice is not cooked with 煮る (niru), to simmer. It is 炊く (taku), a verb kept for rice and grain. In Kansai, people 炊く their vegetables too.
Words and Compounds With 米
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 白米 | hakumai | polished white rice |
| 玄米 | genmai | brown rice |
| 新米 | shinmai | new-crop rice, and a newcomer at work |
| もち米 | mochigome | glutinous rice, the kind used for mochi |
| 米粒 | kometsubu | a single grain of rice |
| 米粉 | komeko | rice flour |
| 米国 | beikoku | the United States |
| 米寿 | beiju | an eighty-eighth birthday |
| 米印 | komejirushi | the reference mark ※ |
新米 is the word with a second life. In autumn it is the new harvest, glossier and more fragrant than last year’s rice. The same word, shinmai, also means a rookie: 新米の先生 is a first-year teacher. That sense began as a different word, 新前 (shinmae), whose sound drifted until it landed on the rice spelling.
Then the surprise. 米 also means America. The country was once written with sound-borrowed characters, 亜米利加 (Amerika), and 米 became its one-character shorthand. 日米 (nichibei) is Japan and the United States, 欧米 (oubei) is Europe and America, the West, and 北米 (hokubei) and 南米 (nanbei) are North and South America.
For a while 米 was also the metre. Katakana メートル (meetoru) replaced it after the war, but apartment listings still give floor space in 平米 (heibei), square metres. And the ※ mark that flags a note in Japanese print is called 米印 (komejirushi), the rice mark.
Rice in Japanese Culture
Every November 23, in a sanctuary inside the Imperial Palace, the emperor offers the year’s new grain to the gods and then eats it himself. The rite is called 新嘗祭 (Niinamesai), and the Imperial Household Agency describes it as the most important of the regular palace ceremonies. Some of the rice on the offering trays was grown by the emperor himself. In 1948 the date became a national holiday under a new name, 勤労感謝の日 (Kinrou Kansha no Hi), Labor Thanksgiving Day, a day off that began as a harvest offering.
Rice also has its own deity. Inari, honored at some thirty thousand shrines, is written 稲荷, and the first character is 稲, the rice plant. The vermilion gates of Fushimi Inari belong, at root, to a god of the rice harvest, and the character for god has its own page in god in Japanese.
At home, rice anchors the meal. It is the bowl you hold in your left hand and the reason the meal is called ご飯 at all. You say itadakimasu before you pick up your chopsticks, and children learn early that leaving grains stuck to the bowl draws a quiet mottainai, what a waste.
It anchors the lunchbox too. In bento culture, the plainest box of all is 日の丸弁当 (hinomaru bentou), white rice with a single red pickled plum in the middle, the national flag in lunch form. At New Year, glutinous rice becomes the stacked mochi of kagami mochi.
As a Tattoo
Few people set out to tattoo the word for rice, but 米 does come up, usually because someone liked the shape, six clean strokes radiating from one point. Know what a Japanese reader sees.
First, it says rice, the grain. Not abundance, not harvest, not nourishment as an idea. The word on a supermarket sack.
Second, it is the everyday abbreviation for the United States. Alone on skin most people will read rice first, but in news writing 米 means America.
Third, it looks like the ※ mark, which Japanese readers see every day as a footnote flag. A small 米 on a wrist can read like a printed note marker before it reads like a word.
Check pairings carefully. 米国 (beikoku) is the United States and 米軍 (beigun) is the US military. Kanji placed side by side form dictionary words, not a sum of ideas. If what you want is the feeling of a harvest coming in, 実り (minori, ripening, the fruit of effort) says that without the grocery aisle.
On script: 米 is written identically in Japanese, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese, so there is no form to choose between. The readings change. In Mandarin it is mǐ, and there it is also the standard word for a metre, while America is written with 美, not 米.
Six open strokes hold up well at small sizes. The weak point is the center, where four strokes meet and ink tends to pool.
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
For more everyday characters with long histories, browse the kanji library.
Sources and Further Reading
- 常用漢字表 (Jōyō Kanji Table, 2010), Agency for Cultural Affairs the Jōyō readings ベイ, マイ and こめ for 米, and ハン and めし for 飯 with 御飯 as an example
- U+7C73 米, Unihan Database, Unicode Consortium radical 119 and six strokes
- 米, Digital Daijisen, Nihon Kokugo Daijiten and Jitsū (Kotobank) second-grade kanji, meanings including America, the metre and the eighty-eighth year, and the pictograph of grain on an ear
- 宮中祭祀 (Palace Rituals), Imperial Household Agency Niinamesai on November 23, the most important regular palace rite, with rice grown by the emperor
- 新嘗祭, Digital Daijisen (Kotobank) the November 23 date and its renaming as Labor Thanksgiving Day in 1948
FAQ
How do you say rice in Japanese?
For the uncooked grain you say kome, written 米, or more politely お米 (okome). For cooked rice in a bowl you say gohan, written ご飯. Kome is two even beats, “koh-meh,” and gohan is three, “goh-hahn,” with the final n counted as its own beat.
What is the difference between kome and gohan?
米 (kome) is raw rice, the grain you buy and rinse. ご飯 (gohan) is rice after it has been cooked, and it also means a meal, so 朝ご飯 is breakfast and 晩ご飯 is dinner. A third word, ライス (raisu), is used on menus for rice served on a plate with Western-style food.
What is the kanji for rice?
The kanji for rice is 米, six strokes, and it is Kangxi radical 119 in its own right. It began as a picture of kernels scattered around an ear of grain. Its readings are こめ (kome), ベイ (bei), and マイ (mai), and it is taught in the second year of primary school.
Why does 米 mean America in Japanese?
Because America was once written with sound-borrowed characters, 亜米利加, and 米 became the one-character abbreviation. 米国 (beikoku) is the United States, 日米 (nichibei) means Japan and the US, and 欧米 (oubei) means the West. Chinese uses a different character, 美, for America.
Is 米 the same character in Chinese?
Yes. Japanese, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese all write 米, and it means rice in all three. The extra meanings differ. In Japanese 米 also stands for America, while in Mandarin, read mǐ, it is also the everyday word for a metre.