Mnemonic
A mouth suddenly sprouts four legs and skitters across the floor like a grotesque spider. Everyone shrieks — a mouth on four legs is nightmarish enough, but four is also the number of death. It crawls toward you, gaping wide.
Additional thoughts
Picture the kanji's boxy outline as a mouth seen from above, with two small legs dangling below. This mouth-spider has exactly four legs — half a spider, doubly unsettling. The unlucky vibe of four reinforces the horror.Quick recall
A mouth sprouts four legs and skitters like a death-spider.Details
The keyword for 四 is four. This kanji represents the number four and is one of the basic numerical characters in Japanese. Unlike the simpler kanji for one (一), two (二), and three (三), which use horizontal strokes to represent their values, 四 does not visually depict four of anything but is instead a more abstract character. In Japanese culture, the number four is sometimes considered unlucky because one of its readings, し (*shi*), is a homophone for the word meaning death.
- On'yomi
- し
- Kun'yomi
- よ、よ.つ、よっ.つ、よん