Snow in Japanese is 雪, said yuki. Eleven strokes, filed under 雨, the rain radical, which sits over a small three-stroke element like a lid. It means snow falling, snow lying on the ground, and in older Japanese anything white enough to be compared with it. Written in hiragana it is ゆき, and in katakana ユキ.
Snow in Japanese
Snow in Japanese is 雪, and the spoken word is yuki. It falls with the same verb as rain: 雪が降る (yuki ga furu), snow falls. The on’yomi セツ (setsu) takes over inside compounds, and that is where the weather report lives: 積雪 (sekisetsu, snow cover, measured in centimetres), 降雪 (kousetsu, snowfall), 除雪 (josetsu, snow clearing).
The same two characters can even switch voices. 大雪 read ooyuki is a heavy snowfall, the warning that scrolls across the bottom of the television. Read taisetsu, it is one of the old calendar’s twenty-four seasonal markers, in early December.
In a city like Tokyo, where a light snowfall can delay the trains, a child at the window shouts 雪だ! (yuki da!), it’s snow. In the snow country on the Sea of Japan side, nobody shouts. They get the shovel.
Yuki Meaning
Yuki (雪) means snow, the white flakes and the white ground they leave behind. In hiragana it is ゆき, in katakana ユキ, and it is said “yoo-kee,” two short even beats. It is also a winter season word in haiku, one of the plainest ways a poem can tell you the month.
Older Japanese stretched the word to anything white. 雪の肌 (yuki no hada), snow skin, is pale, flawless skin, and to have snow on your head was a polite way to say your hair had gone grey. The ladies of the imperial court went further. They called cod yuki, because the character for cod, 鱈 (tara), carries 雪 on its right side.
Yuki is also a common given name, and here a warning saves embarrassment. The name is written many ways, 由紀, 有希 and 幸 (happiness) among them, so a Yuki you meet may have no snow in her name at all. Ask how it is written before you assume.
The Kanji for Snow: 雪
- Character: 雪
- On’yomi: セツ (setsu)
- Kun’yomi: ゆき (yuki), and the literary すす(ぐ) (susugu), to rinse clean
- Stroke count: 11
- General meaning: snow; white as snow; to wash away, as in clearing a disgrace
- Radical: 雨 (rain), Kangxi radical 173, with three strokes added below
It is taught in the second year of Japanese primary school and is usually listed at JLPT N3. The Jōyō table gives it two readings only, setsu and yuki, which covers everything you will meet in daily life.
Japanese Symbol for Snow
The top of 雪 is easy. It is 雨, rain, flattened into a crown, the same lid that sits over the other weather characters on rain in Japanese: 雲 (kumo, cloud), 霜 (shimo, frost), 霧 (kiri, fog) and 雷, the thunder of lightning in Japanese. Anything that falls from the sky or hangs in the air tends to live under it.
The bottom is the interesting part. In the oldest oracle-bone forms, snow was a picture: rain with feathery shapes drifting beneath it. The classical Chinese dictionary Shuowen Jiezi wrote the character with 彗 (sui), a broom, under the rain, and treated the broom as a sound marker. The small ヨ shape at the foot of the modern character is what remains of that broom.
It is tempting to read 雪 as rain you can sweep up. That is a good memory aid, not what the dictionary says.
The broom does leave a trace in meaning, though. 雪 can also mean to wash or wipe clean, and that sense survives in 雪辱 (setsujoku), to wipe out a disgrace. A team that loses a final and wins the rematch a year later has 雪辱を果たした (setsujoku o hatashita), cleaned the slate.
How to Write 雪 in Japanese
Eleven strokes, top before bottom: eight for the rain crown, three for the element below.
Start with the short horizontal at the very top. Then the crown’s frame: a short left vertical, then the stroke that runs across and turns down the right side with a small hook. Then a short vertical down the middle. The four drops come next, left pair first, top to bottom, then the right pair.
The bottom element takes three. A stroke that runs across and turns down at the right, then the middle horizontal, then the bottom horizontal to close it.
The proportions decide whether it looks like snow or like a smudge. As a crown, 雨 has to be wide and shallow, much flatter than the standalone character, and the ヨ should be narrower than the crown and centred under it. Beginners give the crown too much height and squash the bottom.
How to Say Snow in Japanese
Yuki is two short beats: “yoo-kee.” The u is short, not the long English “you,” and neither syllable is stressed. Setsu in compounds is “seh-tsoo,” with that final u barely there.
Real sentences:
- 雪が降っています。(Yuki ga futte imasu.) It is snowing.
- 雪が積もりました。(Yuki ga tsumorimashita.) The snow has settled.
- 今年の初雪です。(Kotoshi no hatsuyuki desu.) It is the first snow of the year.
- 雪だるまを作ろう。(Yukidaruma o tsukurou.) Let’s build a snowman.
- 東京で雪は珍しいです。(Toukyou de yuki wa mezurashii desu.) Snow is unusual in Tokyo.
Two snow words cannot be read from their characters at all. 吹雪 is fubuki, a snowstorm, and 雪崩 is nadare, an avalanche. Both are learned as whole words, the way English spellers learn “yacht.”
Words and Compounds With 雪
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 初雪 | hatsuyuki | the first snow of the season |
| 粉雪 | konayuki | powder snow |
| 牡丹雪 | botan-yuki | large, soft flakes, named for peony petals |
| 吹雪 | fubuki | a snowstorm, a blizzard |
| 雪崩 | nadare | an avalanche |
| 積雪 | sekisetsu | lying snow, snow cover |
| 雪国 | yukiguni | snow country |
| 雪だるま | yukidaruma | a snowman |
| 雪合戦 | yukigassen | a snowball fight |
| 雪辱 | setsujoku | wiping out a past defeat |
The Japanese snowman is built from two balls, not three, stacked into the round shape of a daruma doll, which is where the name comes from. And 吹雪 has a spring cousin: 花吹雪 (hanafubuki), a blizzard of falling cherry petals, one of the entries in our guide to Japanese words with deep meaning.
Snow in Japanese Culture
Snow is not a rarity here. About half of Japan’s land area sees a maximum snow depth above fifty centimetres, and the towns of the Sea of Japan coast run their whole year around it. In snow country it was a hardship that buried houses for months. In the old capitals, Nara and Kyoto, the court wrote about it very differently: snow as something white, brief and elegant.
That view gave Japanese one of its most famous triads. 雪月花 (setsugekka), snow, moon and flowers, names the three emblems of seasonal beauty: winter snow, autumn moon, spring blossom. It is the same moon you meet on moon in Japanese, and the triad is shorthand for everything beautiful in Japanese poetry pays attention to.
Snow even has its own outing. 雪見 (yukimi), snow viewing, means going out, or sitting in, to admire a snowfall, often with warm sake. The earliest recorded snow-viewing banquet is from 872. Matsuo Bashō wrote the outing’s best-known line in 1689: いざ行かむ雪見にころぶ所まで (iza yukan yukimi ni korobu tokoro made), come, let’s go snow viewing, as far as we can before we slip and fall. Houses even got a fixture for it: the 雪見障子 (yukimi shouji), a paper screen whose lower half slides up to reveal glass, so you can watch the garden fill with snow from a warm room. Seasonal words like this are the engine of haiku.
Then there is the scientist. Ukichiro Nakaya, a physicist at Hokkaido University, classified snow crystals by shape and in 1936 grew the first artificial snow crystals in a laboratory. His summary of the work is the line he is still remembered for: snow is a letter sent from heaven. Read the crystal’s shape, he meant, and you can read the temperature and humidity of the cloud it fell from.
Snow also has a woman. 雪女 (yuki-onna) is the pale, lethal snow spirit of the northern mountains, best known abroad through Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan and one of the figures in our guide to Japanese yokai. For the season as a whole, see winter in Japanese.
As a Tattoo
雪 says snow, plainly and without a second meaning a stranger would notice. A Japanese reader sees the weather word, or a name, and on a woman it will often read as a name first, because 雪 appears in given names such as 雪菜 (Yukina) and 小雪 (Koyuki). That is not a problem. It is just worth knowing.
What 雪 does not say is purity, coldness of heart, or winter as a mood. It is snow, the stuff. If the season is what you mean, 冬 (fuyu) is winter.
Check pairings carefully. 雪崩 (nadare) is an avalanche and 豪雪 (gousetsu) is a punishing, record-level snowfall. The best trap of all is 雪隠 (setchin), an old word for a toilet. Kanji set side by side form dictionary words, not a sum of pretty ideas.
On script: 雪 is written identically in Japanese, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, so there is no form to choose between. The Mandarin reading is xuě.
The look-alikes all share the crown. 雷 (thunder), 雲 (cloud) and 電 (electricity) are 雨 over a different bottom element, so the small ヨ is the entire difference between snow and thunder. Like every rain-crown character, 雪 has four small drops that blur first as ink spreads, so give it room: forearm, calf or shoulder rather than a finger.
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 characters from the sky and the seasons, browse the kanji library.
Sources and Further Reading
- 常用漢字表 (Cabinet Notice No. 2 of 2010), Agency for Cultural Affairs Jōyō status and the readings セツ and ゆき
- Unihan database entry for 雪 (U+96EA), Unicode Consortium Kangxi radical 173, eleven strokes
- 雪, Digital Daijisen, Nihon Kokugo Daijiten and Nipponica (Kotobank) second-grade kanji, compounds, the court word for cod, half of Japan's land under deep snow
- 雪見, Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, Nipponica and Britannica Japan (Kotobank) snow viewing, the 872 banquet record, Bashō's 1689 haiku, yukimi shoji
- 中谷宇吉郎, Nipponica (Kotobank) artificial snow crystals in 1936 and "snow is a letter sent from heaven"
FAQ
How do you say snow in Japanese?
You say yuki, written 雪. Two short beats, “yoo-kee,” with no stress on either. Snow falls with the same verb as rain, so it is snowing is 雪が降っています (yuki ga futte imasu). Inside compounds the character switches to its on’yomi setsu, as in 積雪 (sekisetsu, snow cover).
What is the kanji for snow?
The kanji for snow is 雪, eleven strokes, filed under 雨, the rain radical, Kangxi number 173. Its readings are ゆき (yuki) and セツ (setsu). The rain crown sits over a small three-stroke element that is the remnant of a broom in older forms. It is taught in second grade.
What is the Japanese symbol for snow?
雪 is the written symbol: rain on top, a reduced broom shape underneath, though the oldest forms simply drew flakes falling beneath rain. As a family crest, snow appears as a stylised six-sided crystal, and in the arts the classic emblem is 雪月花 (setsugekka), snow, moon and flowers.
How do you write yuki in Japanese?
雪 is the kanji and the standard way to write the word. ゆき is hiragana, common in children’s books and names, and ユキ is katakana, used for a stylised look. Be careful with the name Yuki, which is often written with other kanji entirely, such as 由紀 or 幸.
Does the name Yuki mean snow?
Sometimes. When it is written 雪, yes. But Yuki is one of the most variable names in Japanese, and the same sound is often written 幸 (happiness), 由紀, 有希 and many other combinations chosen for meaning and look. The only way to know is to ask how the name is written.
What is yukimi in Japan?
雪見 (yukimi) is snow viewing, going out or sitting at a window to admire fresh snow, often with warm sake. The custom is recorded at the imperial court from the ninth century and was popular in Edo. Bashō’s 1689 haiku about setting off to see the snow until you slip is its best-known poem.