Explore each form from the oldest known stage to today.
The character 煮 (to boil, cook) evolved from ancient pictographs representing the act of cooking over a fire. Its earliest forms in oracle bone and bronze scripts combined elements meaning 'fire' (火 or 灬) and a cooking vessel. The Liushutong (六书通) form L14428 shows a clear precursor with the 'fire' radical below, directly linking it to the modern kanji 煮. This character belongs to the phono-semantic compound (形声) category, combining the phonetic component '者' with the semantic fire radical '灬', to mean 'to boil' or 'to stew'. Arrived in Japan: The character 煮 likely arrived in Japan during the Yayoi period (300 BCE – 300 CE) or early Kofun period (3rd-7th centuries CE) through cultural exchange with China and Korea, becoming formally established in the Japanese writing system with the introduction of Chinese classics and the adoption of Chinese characters (kanji) for writing Japanese.