The 214 traditional kanji radicals and their variants
Every kanji without exception only has one radical / 部首 (ぶしゅ). Each radical has a meaning(s) and lends its meaning(s) to the kanji of which it is part. Please take a look at the examples below. The right part of these three kanji is the same but the left part is different. The left part of these kanji is their radical. Note how each radical imparts its meaning to the kanji:
時: The radical of this kanji is 日 (sun, day, time). The meaning of this kanji is “time.”
詩: The radical of this kanji is 言 (words, to speak, say). The meaning of this kanji is “poetry, poem”.
持: The radical of this kanji is 扌(hand). The meaning of this kanji is “to hold”.
For this reason it is very important to learn each kanji’s radical, as well as the meaning(s) of its radical. Not all 214 radicals are in use in current Japanese but you will soon become familiar with the most important ones and their variants.
There are no official Japanese names for radicals. But there are certain commonly-used names. That is why you will find differences in the Japanese names for the radicals on different websites and dictionaries.
Radicals are categorized into seven main groups according to their position within a kanji. Please note that some kanji are also radicals in and of themselves (such as 大, 日, 月). In those cases, the kanji and the radical are one and the same, and thus the position of the radical in the kanji is irrelevant. As a result they do not fall into any one of the seven categories.
| へん (hen) |  | Radicals on the left side of the kanji | |||||
| つくり (tsukuri) |  | Radicals on the right | |||||
| かんむり (kanmuri) |  | Radicals on the top | |||||
| あし (ashi) |  | Radicals on the bottom | |||||
| かまえ (kamae) |        | Radicals which enclose the kanji | |||||
| たれ (tare) |  | Radicals which "hang down" | |||||
| にょう (nyou) |  | Radicals which wrap around the bottom of a character |
