What is the Kanji for "Calamity"?

If you are wondering what is the Japanese Kanji for "Calamity", you've come to the right place!

The Japanese Kanji for "Calamity" is "災".

This kanji has 2 readings:

Its kunyomi reading is "Wazawa".

Its onyomi reading is "Sai".

kunyomi readings are based on the pronunciation of native Japanese words, and onyomi readings are based on the Chinese pronunciation of the character.

If you visually breakdown this kanji, you can see is made up of 2 parts:

The component "巛" . And The kanji "火" means "Fire" and can be read as "Hi", "Ka", and "Ho".

Now, let's make sure you understand this kanji the other way around too.

What does the kanji "災" mean in japanese?

"災" means "Calamity".

Japanese School Students learn this kanji in Fifth Grade, while foreigners may learn this kanji in preparation for the JLPT N1 exam.

Here are some words that use this kanji:

災難: "Calamity". The noun '災難 (さいなん)' means 'calamity'. It refers to a sudden and unexpected event that causes great damage or distress, such as a natural disaster, accident, or other severe misfortune. It can also be used more figuratively to describe a difficult or unpleasant situation. For example: Natural disasters are calamities - (自然災害は災難です). The company faced a calamity when their factory burned down - (工場が火災に遭い、会社は災難に見舞われた).

災害: "Disaster". The Japanese noun '災害 (さいがい)' means 'disaster'. This word refers to a sudden, unexpected, and often devastating event that causes significant damage, destruction, and disruption to people's lives, property, and the environment. It can include natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, or human-caused disasters like fires, accidents, or wars. For example: The earthquake was a terrible disaster - (地震は恐ろしい災害だった). They are still recovering from the disaster - (彼らはまだその災害から回復していない).

震災: "Disaster". The Japanese noun '震災 (しんさい)' means 'disaster'. This noun refers to a major natural disaster, typically an earthquake and its subsequent effects such as tsunamis, fires, and infrastructure damage. It is often used to describe specific events like the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. For example: The earthquake caused a major disaster - (地震は大きな震災を引き起こした). We must prepare for future disasters - (私たちは将来の震災に備えなければならない).

火災: "Fire". The Japanese noun '火災 (かさい)' means 'fire'. This word refers to a destructive burning of something, often a building or forest. It is used to describe a situation where a fire has started accidentally or due to negligence and is causing damage. For example: There was a fire at the office last night - (昨晩オフィスで火災がありました). The fire department quickly extinguished the fire - (消防隊が火災を迅速に消火しました).

To make really sure you learn this Kanji, I've prepared an interactive lesson for you. You are going to learn the readings and meanings of this kanji.

But first, you need to know a little bit about Hiragana and Katakana.

Hiragana and katakana are japanese syllabaries, this means that each character represents a syllable.

This are the characters you need to know for this lesson:

The hiragana "さ" is read as "sa". The hiragana "い" is read as "i". The hiragana "わ" is read as "wa". And The hiragana "ざ" is read as "za".

Heres a quick tutorial on how to use it. You'll be asked three type of questions: meaning, reading, and writing.

For meanings questions all you have to do is type the english meaning. If there is more than one meaning, you have to include them all in your answer separating them by commas (,).

For Reading questions you have to type the reading in romaji (roman letters, our normal alphabet) and it'll be automatically converted to hiragana if necessary. If there is more than one reading, you have to include them all in your answer separating them by commas (,).

For Writing questions some options will appear and all you have to do is select the correct ones.