Explore each form from the oldest known stage to today.
The character 家 depicts a house (宀) with a pig (豕) underneath, representing a domesticated space where both humans and livestock lived. In ancient agricultural societies, wealth was measured by livestock, so a household with pigs symbolized prosperity and settled family life. Over time, it evolved from depicting a physical homestead to representing the concept of 'family' or 'household' more abstractly, reflecting how Chinese characters often moved from concrete pictorial representations to conceptual meanings. Arrived in Japan: The character 家 arrived in Japan during the 5th-6th centuries CE, when the Japanese writing system was developing and extensively borrowing Chinese characters (kanji) along with Buddhist texts and Confucian classics through Korean scribes and Chinese scholars.