KanjiPad

Kanji for Death —

Copy the character and paste it anywhere.
N46 strokes

What 死 means

死 is read shi and means death or to die. Six strokes, taught in third grade, and blunt: 死ぬ (shinu) is the plain verb “to die”, with no softening built in. Japanese usually reaches for gentler wording in polite speech — 亡くなる (nakunaru), to pass away — and keeps 死 for the factual register.

The character joins a fragment of a splintered bone on the left with a kneeling figure on the right: a person beside remains. Its shape has barely moved in three thousand years of writing.

死 is why four makes Japanese speakers uneasy. The number 四 is also read shi, so hospitals skip room 4, gift sets avoid four pieces, and buildings sometimes have no fourth floor. The kanji itself is not taboo in writing, though — it lives in ordinary vocabulary like 必死 (hisshi, desperate, literally “certain death”) and 死角 (shikaku, a blind spot).

Readings

death, die
Kun
On

Stroke order

Write 死 in 6 strokes, following the tiles above in order — top to bottom, left to right.

死 as a tattoo

死 reads to a Japanese speaker roughly the way a large tattoo of the word “DEATH” reads in English: unmistakable, heavy, and rarely poetic. That may be exactly what you want, but it is worth knowing it carries none of the philosophical softness that Western tattoo galleries imply, and the four-is-death superstition means it can land as morbid rather than deep. If you go ahead, trace it on our board first so the six strokes come out in the right proportion, and check the kanji tattoo guide for the mistakes that show up most often.

Words with 死

Keep exploring

Practice writing 死 stroke by stroke, with spaced repetition and quizzes, in the app.