鬱: the 29-stroke kanji for gloom

鬱 (utsu) means gloom, low spirits or depression, and with 29 strokes it’s the most complicated kanji in everyday Japanese. It’s on the 常用漢字 (jouyou kanji), Japan’s official list of 2,136 kanji for general use, which it joined in 2010. Nothing else on that list comes close: the runner-up, 鑑, the kan in 図鑑 (zukan), an illustrated guide, has 23.

Taking it apart

Twenty-nine strokes look like a tangle, but 鬱 is built from smaller pieces stacked in three layers:

• Top: 木 缶 木. Two trees, which together would make 林 (hayashi), a grove, with 缶 (kan), a jar or can, squeezed between them.
• Middle: 冖. A lid or cover.
• Bottom: 鬯 and 彡. 鬯 is an old character for ritual wine flavoured with fragrant herbs. Beside it, 彡 is three short slanting strokes.

If you can write 木, 缶 and 冖, and learn the last two, you can write 鬱.

Where it really comes from

Its history is tangled, and scholars don’t agree on all of it.

• The oldest forms, on oracle bones and bronzes, show a grove (林) with two human figures in it, one standing and one bent low. What the scene meant is debated.
• Over time the figures were redrawn. The standing person turned into 缶, the jar, and the bending one into 冖, the lid. 鬯 and 彡 were added later.
• The Shuowen Jiezi, a Chinese dictionary from around 100 CE, defines 鬱 as “trees growing thickly”, with 林 for the meaning and a herb character for the sound. That thick-growth sense lives on in 鬱蒼 (ussou), dense and overgrown, and the herb lives on in 鬱金 (ukon), turmeric.

Some scholars think gloom was the first meaning and thick growth came later; the Shuowen suggests the opposite. Either way, both share a sense of something dense and pent up, and gloom is the meaning everyday Japanese uses.

How to use it

• 月曜日の朝は憂鬱だ。

  Getsuyoubi no asa wa yuuutsu da.

  Monday mornings are so depressing.

• 雨が続いて憂鬱です。

  Ame ga tsuzuite yuuutsu desu.

  All this rain is getting me down.

• 前髪が伸びてうっとうしい。

  Maegami ga nobite uttoushii.

  My bangs have grown out and they're annoying.

• 森の中は木々が鬱蒼と茂っていた。

  Mori no naka wa kigi ga ussou to shigette ita.

  In the forest, the trees grew thick and dark.

• On its own, the word is usually spelled in kana: うつ.
• 憂鬱 (yuuutsu), gloomy or depressing, is the everyday word: rainy days, Monday mornings, a trip to the dentist. It doesn’t mean illness.
• うつ病 (utsubyou), depression, is the medical word. It can be written 鬱病, but うつ病, with kana, is the usual spelling.
• 鬱陶しい (uttoushii) means gloomy, or annoying: rain that won’t stop, hair in your eyes. It’s usually written in kana too.

Words with the same kanji

Remember it

Build it in layers, top to bottom: two trees with a jar between them (木缶木), a lid (冖), a pot of herb wine (鬯), and three drops spilled beside it (彡). Picture that jar forgotten in a dark, overgrown grove: heavy, still and gloomy.

The kanji in this lesson

Tap Draw it to watch the stroke order. Numbers show where each stroke starts.

Draw it

Sources

• Wiktionary: 鬱
• Multi-function Chinese Character Database (CUHK): 鬱
• Wikipedia: List of jōyō kanji

Written by the Chirami team with the help of AI, then checked against JMdict and KANJIDIC2. How we write lessons. Spotted a mistake? Email support@brightsmilesolutions.org.