Explore each form from the oldest known stage to today.
Historical forms are not available yet. The current form is shown as a reference.
The kanji 歩 is a phono-semantic compound character, formed by combining two components that each contribute meaning. It is composed of 止 (footprint) placed above a reversed form of 止, which is 少 with one less dot. This reversed element 少 represents a left foot, while the standard 止 represents a right foot. The character is therefore ideographic, depicting the alternating steps of the right and left foot in the act of walking. Historically, the character's evolution is clearly traceable through oracle bone script and bronze inscriptions. The earliest forms in oracle bone script (甲骨文) explicitly show two footprints, one forward and one backward, placed one above the other. By the seal script (篆書) period, these pictographic footprints had stylized into the more abstract forms of 止 and the reversed 止 (少), solidifying the structure that would evolve into the modern 歩. This structure was standardized during the Qin dynasty's character unification. The character, along with the vast majority of the Japanese writing system, was imported from China, most likely by the 5th century AD via the Korean peninsula. It entered Japan as part of the cultural wave that included Buddhism and Chinese classical texts. An interesting linguistic note is the dual Japanese readings: the Sino-Japanese (on'yomi) reading "HO" and the native (kun'yomi) reading "aru(ku)". Furthermore, the character itself was simplified in Japan post-WWII to form the shinjitai 歩 from the kyūjitai 步, which had an extra dot. This kanji is also a building block in other characters related to movement or rhythm, such as 渉 (to ford, wade) and 頻 (frequent).