JŌYŌ KANJI · Grade 4
garment
garment · clothes · dressing
Readings
Official Jōyō readings in table order
On’yomi 音読み
Kun’yomi 訓読み
Additional readings in the learning dataset
On’yomi
Kun’yomi
These are outside the official Jōyō list above. A listed reading is not necessarily common in modern use.
Origin and meaning
Original sense: clothing, pictured from a garment's collar.
Change in a Japanese word
Wiktionary marks the standalone word's general-clothing sense archaic; robe and food-coating senses remain listed. The character still means clothing in compounds such as 衣服. Word-sense source ↗
Written form
No parenthesized form is given in the official Jōyō index for this character.
Compare manuscript and printed examples in the HNG historical glyph archive ↗. Where available, its dated samples document written forms; they do not establish the first use of this character in Japan.
Examples in the official table
- 衣服，衣食住，作業衣
- 衣，羽衣
Official notes
- 浴衣（ゆかた）
When did it enter Japanese?
Chinese characters reached Japan through a long process of contact. Early inscribed objects and sixth-century Japanese names are documented; this is context for the writing system, not a first date for 衣.
衣 appears in the current Jōyō kanji table published on 30 November 2010. This records modern standard status, not the date the character was first used in Japan.
A dated first Japanese use for 衣 has not been verified in the sources attached to this entry.
Agency for Cultural Affairs: writing history ↗ · 2010 Jōyō notice ↗