Explore each form from the oldest known stage to today.
The character 浦 (pǔ) is a phono-semantic compound, composed of the water radical (氵) on the left, indicating its meaning related to a body of water, and the phonetic component 甫 (fǔ) on the right. In ancient Chinese, it originally referred to a riverbank, shore, or inlet—a place where land and water meet. Over time, its meaning expanded to also include a port or a coastal area. The Liushutong (六书通) is a dictionary of ancient character forms, and the entry L14578 shows an archaic seal script variant that visually represents this concept of a waterside landscape, which eventually evolved into the modern, regularized kanji 浦. Arrived in Japan: The character 浦, along with the vast majority of Chinese characters, is believed to have arrived in Japan in several waves, primarily during the 5th to 8th centuries AD. This period saw the formal introduction of the Chinese writing system to Japan through cultural exchange, often via Korean peninsula intermediaries. It was systematically adopted into the Japanese language and appears in early Japanese texts like the "Man'yōshū" poetry anthology (8th century).