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 獣 (jū, kemono) is a phono-semantic compound character, formed by combining the semantic component 嘼 with the phonetic component 犬 (ken/inu, "dog"). The character 嘼 itself is an ancient, simplified pictograph depicting a long-haired animal, likely a hunting dog or a beast like a badger, with emphasis on its head, legs, and tail. The core meaning was a "hairy quadruped" or a "game animal" hunted for sport or food. The later addition of 犬 served to both reinforce the animal-related meaning and to standardize the character's pronunciation in Chinese. Historically, the character evolved significantly. Its earliest forms in oracle bone script (甲骨文) and bronze script (金文) were highly pictographic. During the seal script (篆書) period, the form stabilized into 獸, which combined the 嘼 and 犬 components. This classical form 獸 was used in China for centuries and was the version originally imported to Japan, likely between the 5th and 8th centuries via Buddhist sutras, Confucian texts, and other cultural artifacts. In Japan, the character was used in its traditional form until the mid-20th century, when the Japanese government introduced the 新字体 (shinjitai, "new character forms") reforms. The modern Japanese kanji 獣 is the simplified shinjitai form, which reduced the complex 嘼 component to 単. A key linguistic and cultural distinction lies in the original Chinese meaning versus its modern Japanese usage. In classical Chinese, 獸 specifically referred to wild beasts, particularly those that were hunted, contrasting with 畜 (chiku), which meant domesticated animals. This distinction was carried into early Japanese usage. However, in modern Japanese, 獣 can refer to beasts and mammals broadly, but it carries a strong connotation of wildness, ferocity, or a base, instinctual nature. This is evident in words like 獣医 (jūi, "veterinarian," literally "beast doctor") and 野獣 (yajū, "wild beast"), where it retains its wild essence, differentiating it from the more general term 動物 (dōbutsu, "animal").