Tiger in Japanese is 虎, said tora. Eight strokes, and the character is a pictogram: 虍 at the top is the tiger’s head, and the two strokes at the foot are what became of its legs and tail. The on’yomi is コ (ko). Written in hiragana it is とら, and in katakana トラ.
Tiger in Japanese
Tiger in Japanese is 虎, and the spoken word is tora. As with 猫 for cat, the single character and the everyday word are the same thing, so you can point at a tiger and say tora and be exactly right.
The on’yomi コ (ko) is confined to bookish compounds such as 虎穴 (koketsu, a tiger’s den) and 虎視眈々 (koshitantan). It is not a word anyone says on its own.
One quirk worth knowing early: 虎 carries a slang second meaning of drunkard. 大虎 (ootora) is literally a big tiger and idiomatically a staggering drunk. Japanese finds something tiger-like in a man who has had too much, and the usage is old enough to be in the dictionary.
The Kanji for Tiger: 虎
- Character: 虎
- On’yomi: コ (ko)
- Kun’yomi: とら (tora)
- Stroke count: 8
- General meaning: tiger, and by extension a drunkard
- Radical: 虍, the “tiger stripes” radical, Kangxi radical 141, called とらかんむり (torakanmuri), the tiger crown
Japanese Symbol for Tiger
虎 is a pictogram, and the process that flattened it is unusually well documented.
The oldest forms drew the whole animal. 虍, the part that survives at the top, is the tiger’s head, stripes and open jaw included. Below it ran the torso, the legs, and the tail. Over centuries the torso disappeared entirely, and the legs and tail collapsed first into 人, a person shape, in small seal script, and then into 儿, the two-stroke base, in clerical script.
So what you write today is a tiger’s head standing on a pair of legs, with the body edited out. That 儿 is the same element that forms the base of 光 (light) and 元 (origin). It means nothing tiger-specific. It is just what was left.
虍 also works as a radical in its own right, appearing at the top of characters like 虚 (kyo, emptiness) and 虐 (gyaku, cruelty). When you see that crown, the character usually has something fierce or hollow under it.
How to Write 虎 in Japanese
Eight strokes, crown first, base last.
The 虍 crown takes six of them: the short horizontal at the top, the short vertical beneath it on the left, then a horizontal, the long stroke that sweeps down and left to form the crown’s flank, and the two short horizontals tucked inside on the right. The crown should be wide and should overhang what sits beneath it.
The final two strokes are the base. A short stroke slanting down to the left, then the vertical that turns and hooks up at the bottom right. That hook is the last thing you write and the first thing that gets rushed, and without it the character sits flat.
The long left-hand sweep of the crown is the character’s signature stroke. It should run down past the base and finish with a lift. Shorten it and 虎 loses its lean.
How to Say Tiger in Japanese
Tora is two even beats: “toh-rah.” The o is short, as in “or,” the a is open, as in “father,” and the r is the Japanese tapped r, made with a single flick of the tongue, closer to an English d than a rolled r. No stress on either beat.
Real sentences:
- 虎は日本にいません。(Tora wa Nihon ni imasen.) There are no tigers in Japan.
- 動物園で虎を見ました。(Doubutsuen de tora o mimashita.) I saw a tiger at the zoo.
- 虎の子のお金です。(Tora no ko no okane desu.) It is money I have been carefully saving.
- 彼は虎視眈々と機会を狙っている。(Kare wa koshitantan to kikai o neratte iru.) He is watching keenly for his chance.
- 虎穴に入らずんば虎子を得ず。(Koketsu ni irazunba koji o ezu.) Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
That last is a proverb, and it is worth having: if you do not enter the tiger’s den, you will not get the tiger’s cub.
Words and Compounds With 虎
- 虎の子 (tora no ko): a tiger cub, and idiomatically a treasured possession or hard-won savings.
- 虎の巻 (tora no maki): a book of secrets, a crib sheet, the answer key.
- 虎穴 (koketsu): a tiger’s den, meaning any genuinely dangerous place.
- 猛虎 (mouko): a fierce tiger.
- 竜虎 (ryuuko): dragon and tiger, meaning two mighty and evenly matched rivals.
- 白虎 (byakko): the White Tiger, the Taoist god ruling the western heavens.
- 虎視眈々 (koshitantan): watching vigilantly for an opening, with an eagle eye.
- 大虎 (ootora): a big tiger, and colloquially a staggering drunk.
- トラ猫 (toraneko): a tabby cat, literally a tiger cat.
虎の巻 is the one students know. It means the crammer, the model answers, the shortcut through the syllabus, and it is said without embarrassment.
Tiger in Japanese Culture
Start with the fact that shapes everything else: there have never been tigers in Japan. The animal’s historical range ran from eastern Turkey across Asia to Siberia, Sumatra and Bali, and it never crossed to the Japanese islands. Fossils once reported as Pleistocene tigers in Japan turned out to be the cave lion, a different animal entirely.
So every Japanese tiger is an imported tiger. Painters worked from Chinese models, from imported pelts, and from description, which is why so many pre-modern Japanese tigers look subtly wrong: too feline in the face, too domestic in the posture. They produced magnificent screens anyway.
The pairing that matters most in art is 竜虎, dragon and tiger. In the East Asian tradition the tiger is the earth creature and the dragon’s equal and opposite, the two standing for matter and spirit, which is why they face each other across paired screens, temple doors, and a great many backs and sleeves in irezumi. The White Tiger, 白虎, is one of the Four Symbols and holds the west and the autumn. Our guide to japanese tattoo meanings sets out how the two read together, and the Japanese dragon has its own long history here.
The zodiac tiger is a trap worth flagging. The third sign of the twelve is read tora, but it is not written 虎. It is written 寅, a completely separate character used only as a calendar sign. Anyone born in a tiger year who wants the zodiac connection specifically wants 寅, not 虎. You can check which sign a year falls under with our Japanese zodiac tool.
In modern Japan the loudest tigers are the Hanshin Tigers, 阪神タイガース, the baseball club based in Nishinomiya in Hyogo and playing at Koshien Stadium. Their fans call them 猛虎, the fierce tigers.
One thing to leave alone. The Pearl Harbor signal “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, sent by Mitsuo Fuchida on 7 December 1941 to report that complete surprise had been achieved, is not the word for tiger. It was an abbreviation, to from 突撃 (totsugeki, charge) and ra from 雷撃 (raigeki, torpedo attack). The tiger is a coincidence of sound, and it is worth saying so, because the internet repeats the other version constantly.
As a Tattoo
虎 is a strong single character and an unusually good one for tattoo work, because the meaning is exact, the shape leans, and the long crown stroke gives an artist something to work with.
Know what it says. 虎 is the animal, plainly. It does not mean courage, ferocity, or protection. Those readings belong to tiger imagery in the tradition, not to the character. If it is the symbolism you want, the drawn tiger carries far more than the word does, and paired with a dragon it carries more still.
Do not use 虎 for the zodiac. The tiger year is 寅. Getting this wrong is the single most common error on tiger pieces and it is invisible to anyone who cannot read the difference.
Check pairings. 大虎 (ootora) means a falling-down drunk. 虎の巻 (tora no maki) means a crib sheet. Characters set beside 虎 form real dictionary words, and neither of those is a compliment.
On script: 虎 is written identically in Japanese, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, so there is no wrong regional form to avoid. Only the sound changes, from tora to hǔ in Mandarin.
Eight strokes hold well at medium sizes. The part that closes up over the years is the pair of short horizontals tucked inside the crown, so keep it clear of very small placements and let the sweeping left stroke run its full length.
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 tiger in Japanese?
You say tora, written 虎. Two flat beats, “toh-rah,” with a tapped r and no stress on either syllable. It covers the animal in every context and has no separate plural. The on’yomi ko stays inside written compounds such as 虎穴 (koketsu, tiger’s den) and 虎視眈々 (koshitantan).
What is the kanji for tiger?
The kanji for tiger is 虎, eight strokes. Its top element 虍 is the tiger’s head and is Kangxi radical 141, the tiger crown. The two strokes at the base are all that remain of the animal’s legs and tail after the torso dropped out. Its readings are とら (tora) and コ (ko).
What is the Japanese symbol for tiger?
虎 is the written symbol, and it is a genuine picture rather than a sound-and-meaning compound. The head survives at the top as 虍, complete with stripes, while the body was edited away and the legs collapsed into the same two-stroke base that appears under 光 (light) and 元 (origin).
How do you write tora in Japanese?
虎 is the kanji and the standard written form for the animal. とら is hiragana and トラ is katakana, the latter common in team names and branding. Note that the zodiac tiger is written 寅, also read tora, and is a different character used only as a calendar sign.
Is 虎 the same character in Chinese?
Yes. 虎 is written identically in Japanese, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, so there is no regional variant to avoid. Only the pronunciation differs: tora or ko in Japanese, hǔ in Mandarin. The tiger crown 虍 serves as the same radical in all three writing systems.
Did “Tora! Tora! Tora!” mean tiger?
No. Mitsuo Fuchida sent the signal on 7 December 1941 to report that complete surprise had been achieved at Pearl Harbor, and it was an abbreviation rather than the animal: to from 突撃 (totsugeki, charge) and ra from 雷撃 (raigeki, torpedo attack). The match with 虎 is coincidence.