Meaning & readings

skill, art, craft, ability, feat, performance, vocation, arts

On’yomi
Kun’yomi わざ

Origin

The character combines a hand component on the left, which refers to manual work or handling, with a sound hint on the right that suggests the pronunciation. The hand radical makes sense for "skill" and "craft" since these are things done with your hands — techniques, arts, and performances all involve manual ability or bodily control. The right component tells you roughly how to say the character rather than adding to its meaning. Over time, the character came to encompass all kinds of skill and ability, not just manual ones.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

7 strokes

Components

  • radical left
  • sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 演技 えんぎ acting; performance
  • 技巧 ぎこう technique; finesse
  • 技師 ぎし engineer; technical officer
  • 技術 ぎじゅつ technology; engineering
  • 技能 ぎのう technical skill; ability
  • 技法 ぎほう technique
  • 球技 きゅうぎ ball game (e.g. baseball, tennis, soccer)
  • 競技 きょうぎ game; match

Reference

Strokes
7
Kangxi radical
64
Grade
Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#434 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+06280