Are kanji characters made up of radicals only or could they contain strokes that are not radicals?


Inspired by [this question of rounded or circular strokes in
kanji](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/3755/are-there-no-rounded-
or-circular-strokes-in-any-%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%EF%BC%9F), I got an idea to
prove that there is no circular strokes in kanji by examining all kanji
radicals, which is a lot less that examining all kanji characters.

But that would work only if kanji characters are made up of radicals only, and
would not work if kanji characters could contain strokes that are not part of
the list of all radicals.

So, are kanji characters made up of radicals only or can they contain strokes
that are not radicals?




The short answer is: not all the elements of all the characters are
‘radicals’. For example 凹 (concave, hollow) consists according to the
dictionaries of 部首 _bushu_ (or radical if you will, more on that below) 凵 and
three more strokes that cannot be further analyzed or categorized.

A more complete answer would depend (as Tsuyoshi Ito already indicated in his
note) on what you mean by ‘radical’. In my short answer I assumed ‘radicals’
to mean the 214 _bushu_ from the 康熙字典 (Kangxi dictionary). Those 214 _bushu_
have long been regarded as a standard, but variant lists of _bushu_ exist,
both from the past and of the present. Since basically _bushu_ form an index
system, whether a _bushu_ is listed or not depends on its usefulness for the
function of indexing - not as a tool of structural analysis of the characters.

However, since it is possible to map a lot of the parts of characters onto
_bushu_ , _most_ characters could _indeed_ be analyzed as consisting of
_bushu_. A lot of the 象形文字 _shōkei moji_ (pictographs) like 木 tree, 目 eye, 馬
horse, etc.) are _bushu_ themselves and need then not be further analyzed as
such. Further, the type of strokes that are used to draw a character have been
simplified to the point that almost any segment or stroke can be seen as a
‘variant’ of some _bushu_ \- particularly if you include one stroke _bushu_
like 一, 丨, 丶, 丿 and 乙 (the last one can potentially be used as a kind of wild
card for any longer curved stroke).

To rephrase your question: are there characters that contain elements or
strokes that can not be mapped onto _bushu_? The answer to that would
apparently depend on which list of _bushu_ you use, and how liberal you are in
using one stroke _bushu_ as wild cards, but _very few_ at most. However, that
is mainly the result of the way characters and strokes have been simplified,
resulting in strokes and shapes that overlap today, even though they were
different at some time in the past. For that reason identifying elements as
_bushu_ not always helps to understand why a character looks a certain way.
For starters, it does not help understand the _bushu_ that are complex
independent characters themselves. Often these are pictographic or symbolic,
even though it is often possible to ‘analyse’ these _bushu_ with yet other
_bushu_ , for example 貝 ( _bushu_ 154) as consisting of 目 ( _bushu_ 109) and
two dots ( _bushu_ 3 and 4) while in fact it's a pictograph of the shell(s) of
a oyster or a clam. Or 自 ( _bushu_ 132), which can be seen as consisting of
again 目 and a dot, but is in fact a pictograph of a nose.

Likewise other characters of which elements can be mapped onto _bushu_ often
have a different history as well. For example 去 is usually indexed under 土 (
_bushu_ 32) _earth_ (while the remaining stokes could be seen as a variant of
厶 ( _bushu_ 28)), but according to Henshall it originally depicted a lid on a
rice container.

Coming back to other possible meanings of ‘radical’, the Wikipedia page
["Radical (chinese
character)"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_%28Chinese_character%29)
that Tsuyoshi Ito linked to is accurate enough, but potentially somewhat
confusing, because traditionally (in the context of Western linguistics) a
radical had nothing to do with an index system (as the _bushu_ are) and was
used with a meaning that is rather the opposite of the meaning of terms like
‘signific’ or ‘semantic determinative’ (or ‘phonetic’ for that matter). Boltz
(1994:67) explains well how historically a ‘semantic determinative’ like for
example 牛 to the left of 勿 in 物 was later added to clarify the meaning
‘creature; thing’ and that thus in fact 勿 should be the ‘root’ or ‘radical’ in
the original Western linguistic sense of those terms - exactly _not_ the
‘signific’ or ‘semantic determinative’. In the context of Chinese and Japanese
characters the term ‘radical’ is therefore best avoided.

In conclusion I'd like to go into the _reason_ that was given for asking
whether _kanji_ are only made of ‘radicals’, which was: can a comprehensive
list of those radicals be used to scan for the existance of circular strokes
in _kanji_?

The answer to that question is much more emphatic: **no way!**

First of all for the reason already (perhaps not explicitly enough) stated,
namely that even if you limit kanji to ‘regular scipt’ _kanji_ , _kaisho_ ,
(楷書) and would take the largest existing list of _bushu_ (and perhaps
comparable elements, like e.g. elements from the indexes of some dictionaries
like the one by Nelson), a _kanji_ written in _kaisho_ could still contain
somewhat surpising shapes (especially if you take all kanji into account, not
just regular use ones) to which 丿 or 乙 might point, but not predict the actual
shape of.

The second reason presumes that you not necessarily would want to limit your
search to kanji written in _kaisho_ style. Certainly in the [oldest form of
kanji](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script) that have been found,
strongly curved and even perfecly circular forms were possible ([here a nice
image of an oracle shell featuring several
circles](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB%3aOracleShell.JPG)).
Currently, artists feel free to create kanji inspired by these very old
predecessors.

The later [seal script](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_Script) (originally
written with brush and ink on bamboo) allowed to some extend curved and more
or less circular shapes as well. Interestingly, variants of seal script are
still used quite frequently. This style may for example be used for their
aesthetic value in [stamps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_seal), or
book headings, sign boards1, etc.

Apart from _kaisho_ and seal script, other styles are in use. For example
cursive forms, that are used in hand writing or in calligraphy. Designers of
typefaces for printing fonts or sign boards take hints from all of those. See
[a sample of a handwriting
font](http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/views/View_unifont.html) that includes round
shapes. Entire books have been printed with typefaces that are very different
from _kaisho_. That would indicate that the rectangular shapes of _kaisho_ are
not a standard that is written in stone.

* * *

Notes:  
**(1)** (from second last paragraph): A [Google search for "篆書"
看板](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E7%AF%86%E6%9B%B8%22%20%E7%9C%8B%E6%9D%BF&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&ei=HSLSTsCYA46aOs-
hgaEP&sa=N) will show plenty of results, for example [on
seikeikai.net](http://www.seikeikai.net/signboard/date_11-27-2008.html), [this
image showing two shop
signs](http://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/47/50/33e04ea01fb6cf1a92dc42e4e6ae37ff.jpg)
and [another
sign](http://img.blogs.yahoo.co.jp/ybi/1/73/ed/garagaranyan/folder/1132884/img_1132884_21947920_5?1231709754).

References:  
William G. Boltz (1994) _The origin and early development of the Chinese
writing system_. American oriental society: New Haven.  
Kenneth G. Henshall (1990) _A guide to remembering Japanese characters_.
Tuttle Company: Vermont & Tokyo.




The short answer is: not all the elements of all the characters are
‘radicals’. For example 凹 (concave, hollow) consists according to the
dictionaries of 部首 _bushu_ (or radical if you will, more on that below) 凵 and
three more strokes that cannot be further analyzed or categorized.

A more complete answer would depend (as Tsuyoshi Ito already indicated in his
note) on what you mean by ‘radical’. In my short answer I assumed ‘radicals’
to mean the 214 _bushu_ from the 康熙字典 (Kangxi dictionary). Those 214 _bushu_
have long been regarded as a standard, but variant lists of _bushu_ exist,
both from the past and of the present. Since basically _bushu_ form an index
system, whether a _bushu_ is listed or not depends on its usefulness for the
function of indexing - not as a tool of structural analysis of the characters.

However, since it is possible to map a lot of the parts of characters onto
_bushu_ , _most_ characters could _indeed_ be analyzed as consisting of
_bushu_. A lot of the 象形文字 _shōkei moji_ (pictographs) like 木 tree, 目 eye, 馬
horse, etc.) are _bushu_ themselves and need then not be further analyzed as
such. Further, the type of strokes that are used to draw a character have been
simplified to the point that almost any segment or stroke can be seen as a
‘variant’ of some _bushu_ \- particularly if you include one stroke _bushu_
like 一, 丨, 丶, 丿 and 乙 (the last one can potentially be used as a kind of wild
card for any longer curved stroke).

To rephrase your question: are there characters that contain elements or
strokes that can not be mapped onto _bushu_? The answer to that would
apparently depend on which list of _bushu_ you use, and how liberal you are in
using one stroke _bushu_ as wild cards, but _very few_ at most. However, that
is mainly the result of the way characters and strokes have been simplified,
resulting in strokes and shapes that overlap today, even though they were
different at some time in the past. For that reason identifying elements as
_bushu_ not always helps to understand why a character looks a certain way.
For starters, it does not help understand the _bushu_ that are complex
independent characters themselves. Often these are pictographic or symbolic,
even though it is often possible to ‘analyse’ these _bushu_ with yet other
_bushu_ , for example 貝 ( _bushu_ 154) as consisting of 目 ( _bushu_ 109) and
two dots ( _bushu_ 3 and 4) while in fact it's a pictograph of the shell(s) of
a oyster or a clam. Or 自 ( _bushu_ 132), which can be seen as consisting of
again 目 and a dot, but is in fact a pictograph of a nose.

Likewise other characters of which elements can be mapped onto _bushu_ often
have a different history as well. For example 去 is usually indexed under 土 (
_bushu_ 32) _earth_ (while the remaining stokes could be seen as a variant of
厶 ( _bushu_ 28)), but according to Henshall it originally depicted a lid on a
rice container.

Coming back to other possible meanings of ‘radical’, the Wikipedia page
["Radical (chinese
character)"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_%28Chinese_character%29)
that Tsuyoshi Ito linked to is accurate enough, but potentially somewhat
confusing, because traditionally (in the context of Western linguistics) a
radical had nothing to do with an index system (as the _bushu_ are) and was
used with a meaning that is rather the opposite of the meaning of terms like
‘signific’ or ‘semantic determinative’ (or ‘phonetic’ for that matter). Boltz
(1994:67) explains well how historically a ‘semantic determinative’ like for
example 牛 to the left of 勿 in 物 was later added to clarify the meaning
‘creature; thing’ and that thus in fact 勿 should be the ‘root’ or ‘radical’ in
the original Western linguistic sense of those terms - exactly _not_ the
‘signific’ or ‘semantic determinative’. In the context of Chinese and Japanese
characters the term ‘radical’ is therefore best avoided.

In conclusion I'd like to go into the _reason_ that was given for asking
whether _kanji_ are only made of ‘radicals’, which was: can a comprehensive
list of those radicals be used to scan for the existance of circular strokes
in _kanji_?

The answer to that question is much more emphatic: **no way!**

First of all for the reason already (perhaps not explicitly enough) stated,
namely that even if you limit kanji to ‘regular scipt’ _kanji_ , _kaisho_ ,
(楷書) and would take the largest existing list of _bushu_ (and perhaps
comparable elements, like e.g. elements from the indexes of some dictionaries
like the one by Nelson), a _kanji_ written in _kaisho_ could still contain
somewhat surpising shapes (especially if you take all kanji into account, not
just regular use ones) to which 丿 or 乙 might point, but not predict the actual
shape of.

The second reason presumes that you not necessarily would want to limit your
search to kanji written in _kaisho_ style. Certainly in the [oldest form of
kanji](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script) that have been found,
strongly curved and even perfecly circular forms were possible ([here a nice
image of an oracle shell featuring several
circles](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB%3aOracleShell.JPG)).
Currently, artists feel free to create kanji inspired by these very old
predecessors.

The later [seal script](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_Script) (originally
written with brush and ink on bamboo) allowed to some extend curved and more
or less circular shapes as well. Interestingly, variants of seal script are
still used quite frequently. This style may for example be used for their
aesthetic value in [stamps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_seal), or
book headings, sign boards1, etc.

Apart from _kaisho_ and seal script, other styles are in use. For example
cursive forms, that are used in hand writing or in calligraphy. Designers of
typefaces for printing fonts or sign boards take hints from all of those. See
[a sample of a handwriting
font](http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/views/View_unifont.html) that includes round
shapes. Entire books have been printed with typefaces that are very different
from _kaisho_. That would indicate that the rectangular shapes of _kaisho_ are
not a standard that is written in stone.

* * *

Notes:  
**(1)** (from second last paragraph): A [Google search for "篆書"
看板](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E7%AF%86%E6%9B%B8%22%20%E7%9C%8B%E6%9D%BF&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&ei=HSLSTsCYA46aOs-
hgaEP&sa=N) will show plenty of results, for example [on
seikeikai.net](http://www.seikeikai.net/signboard/date_11-27-2008.html), [this
image showing two shop
signs](http://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/47/50/33e04ea01fb6cf1a92dc42e4e6ae37ff.jpg)
and [another
sign](http://img.blogs.yahoo.co.jp/ybi/1/73/ed/garagaranyan/folder/1132884/img_1132884_21947920_5?1231709754).

References:  
William G. Boltz (1994) _The origin and early development of the Chinese
writing system_. American oriental society: New Haven.  
Kenneth G. Henshall (1990) _A guide to remembering Japanese characters_.
Tuttle Company: Vermont & Tokyo.

