Origin

This character combines two simple pictures to show the idea of dawn. The top part, 日, is a box representing the sun, and the bottom part, 一, is a horizontal line representing the horizon or the earth. Together they depict the sun just appearing above the horizon at daybreak—the moment when the sun emerges from the flat line of the horizon in the early morning. This visual image naturally came to mean dawn, daybreak, or the beginning of the day.