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 窓 (sō, mado) is a phono-semantic compound (形声文字, keisei moji). Its modern form combines the "roof" radical (穴, meaning "hole" or "cave") with the phonetic component 囪 (sō), which originally depicted a lattice-style window with a chimney, representing an "aperture for light and air." Historically, the character evolved from an ancient pictograph. The earliest forms in oracle bone and bronze scripts showed a simple window with lattice or crossbars. The seal script (篆書, tensho) form solidified the structure that led to the modern kanji. The original character 囪 itself was a pictograph of a window, but over time, to avoid confusion and specify the meaning of a "hole in a roof/wall," the "roof/cave" radical (穴) was added, creating 窓. This process of adding a clarifying radical is common in the evolution of Chinese characters. The character, along with the vast majority of the kanji system, was introduced to Japan in waves, primarily from the 5th to 8th centuries AD via cultural contact with the Korean peninsula and direct missions to China. It was adopted into the Japanese writing system as part of the imported Chinese logographs used to represent the Japanese language. A significant linguistic note is the Japanese kun'yomi "mado." This native Japanese word is believed to be a compound of "me" (目, "eye") and "to" (戸, "door"), literally meaning "eye-door," which is a uniquely Japanese conceptualization of a window. This contrasts with the Chinese-derived on'yomi "sō," which carries the original etymological sense of an aperture. The character 窓 is also commonly seen in its slightly simplified variant 窓, which is the standard form in Japan, while 窗 is an older, traditional variant.