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 character 稲 (ina, "rice plant") is a phono-semantic compound, formed by combining the semantic component 禾, meaning "grain" or "cereal plant," with the phonetic component 舀 (yǎo/tō), which originally depicted a hand (爪) pressing someone into a mortar (臼) and provided the sound "tō." This character was created in China to specifically denote the rice plant, distinguishing it from other grains like wheat or millet. Historically, the character evolved from the seal script form and was standardized into its current form during the clerical script transformation in the Han Dynasty. The original phonetic component 舀 was sometimes confused with the similar-looking 爫 over 白, leading to the modern form 稲. The core semantic element 禾 has always remained, clearly anchoring the character's meaning in the domain of cultivated grains. The kanji, along with the Chinese writing system and wet-rice agriculture, was introduced to Japan around the 5th century CE, likely via the Korean Peninsula. The Japanese adopted the character for its meaning, applying it to their own word for the rice plant, "ina." A key cultural note is that while 稲 refers to the plant in the field, the harvested and processed grains are called 米 (kome), and cooked rice is ご飯 (gohan). This distinction reflects the profound cultural and linguistic importance of rice in Japan, where 稲 represents the living, agricultural source of the staple food.