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 髪 is a phono-semantic compound, formed by combining the semantic component 髟, meaning "long hair," with the phonetic component 犮. The character 髟 itself is a pictograph depicting long, flowing human hair, originally showing a person with hair streaming behind them. The 犮 component, which is also seen in characters like 抜 (to pull out), provides the approximate pronunciation ("batsu"/"fatsu" in historical Chinese) and contributes a connotation of "pulling" or "rising up," likely evoking the image of hair being pulled back or standing on end. Historically, the character evolved from its earliest oracle bone script forms, which more clearly illustrated the human figure, to the more abstract and stylized seal script form. This seal script was standardized during the Qin dynasty, solidifying the structure that would eventually evolve into the modern 髪. The character was transmitted to Japan in waves, primarily from the 5th to 8th centuries AD, via cultural artifacts such as Buddhist sutras, Confucian classics, and official seals and documents. It was adopted into the Japanese writing system as a regular-use kanji, inheriting its Chinese meaning and Sino-Japanese readings (e.g., *hatsu* in 頭髪). A key linguistic note is the distinction between 髪 and 髮. In traditional Chinese and Japanese orthography, 髪 is actually a specific-use simplification of the more complex standard form 髮. Both share the same components and meaning, but 髪 uses a simplified variant of the 犮 phonetic. In modern Japanese, 髪 is the standard form, while traditional Chinese still uses 髮. The character almost exclusively refers to the hair on the human head, reflecting a cultural and linguistic specificity distinct from words for animal hair or fur.