Forgive me if this question seems foolish, but perhaps curiosity has gotten
the best of me 'cause I am asking away. Every time I sit down to practice some
good ol' kanji writing, I can't help but notice the lack of rounded shapes,
circles, spheres, etc.. Sure, there are some curved strokes, but even in words
that speak of "circular" and "rounded" things (丸、円...), there is nothing
remotely "round" in the kanji to speak of.

I know very little about the etymology of kanji, so perhaps I am embarrassing
myself by asking this question. However, I am curious to know -- were there
ever circular strokes in kanji? What's the story, if there is one at all...?
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kanji
Are there no rounded or circular strokes in any 漢字？
No need to be embarrassed. We all start somewhere.

I first erroneously answered by saying, "there are no rounded stokes in
Japanese kanji." However, only after I submitted my answer did I notice you
were specifically asking if there were _ever_ rounded strokes. D'oh!

Okay, so... to start, there are, as you know, no current circular strokes in
kanji.

However, if you go back far enough into the origins of kanji, you can see that
[they were based on
pictographs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_signs_in_China#Ji.C7.8Eh.C3.BA),
which can be curvy and all sorts of shapes. So, in a way, yes, there used to
be rounded shapes.

The trick is where do you draw the line on when they can be considered
"Japanese" kanji. As you know, kanji was brought over from China and then
adapted to fit Japanese needs.

It has evolved, but I believe that by the time Japan started using the
characters, they were already formalized on the mainland and no longer had any
distinct circles. (History available
[here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#History)).

So I think a sensible answer could be that _Japanese_ kanji has never had
round shapes.

However, I think one could argue that kanji _itself_ , if you go back far
enough, had some circular(ish) shapes in it.
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There are many ways to write Kanji, similar to how there are many ways to
write Romaji. The main difference I think is that we generally haven't needed
an "official writing style" for Romaji, probably because there are so few
letters.

But with Kanji there are many different parts and even different types of
lines that can make a difference in meaning so there have been several
"official writing styles" over thousands of years which improve legibility.

**The "official writing style" for Kanji taught in Japan does not use circular
shapes.**

However, some people will use circles in handwriting or fonts to make the
writing seem "cute":

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8XNJq.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8XNJq.png)

Also, there are other styles of writing, like Grass Script（草書）or Seal
Script（篆書）that make heavy use of curves and circles. **These were "official
writing styles" hundreds of years ago.** The highlighted text below
reads,「天地玄黄」

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5EYKU.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5EYKU.jpg)

As was mentioned by @Questioner, **some of the oldest standardized forms of
Kanji that have yet been found in China very commonly use curved and circular
shapes.**

Ancient inscriptions like these found on ritual metal cooking pots that you
can see in museums show this older type of writing with lots of curves and
circles. This was the "official writing style" of the time, though there were
still many differences compared to the standardization of today.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AcGfj.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AcGfj.png)

Here's a side-by-side comparision of the common character「果」in modern angular
and ancient circular styles:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/etb7m.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/etb7m.png)

It might be worth mentioning that Hiragana (with curved shapes) were developed
from Kanji (usually similar to the Grass Script versions). Here's a good
resource that shows how that works:

<http://ameblo.jp/hikkobo/entry-11900991321.html>
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There is 「㪳」but I’m not sure what it means, it may be phonetic.
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This thread is already quite old, but @ひまわり's recent contribution caught my
attention.

As far as _Kanji_ are concerned, i.e. Chinese characters used in Japanese
language, it is safe to assume indeed that they don't contain rounded or
circular strokes, at least in printed form, and it could be expected to be the
same for all other languages (Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese).

However, the Unicode set of Unihan characters contains some quite surprising
exceptions I happened to run into.

1/ There are three characters with an elliptic component, very similar to what
can be found in Hangul:

㔔㪳㫈

[![㔔㪳㫈](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hVLE7.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hVLE7.png)

Interestingly enough, there are also three characters with the same angular
component replacing the elliptic one:

㔖㪲㫇

[![㔖㪲㫇](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qge4W.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qge4W.png)

BTW, the source of these six characters is definitely Korean.

2/ Two characters have rounded parts, one looking like a vertical sine wave,
and another one similar to Japanese hiragana り:

[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yu7Tz.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yu7Tz.png)

3/ Even more puzzling, some characters contain _loops_ :

[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NZMAS.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NZMAS.png)

I must confess that these Unihan characters are somehow an enigma to me, I
ignore which texts they originally come from, and wonder how they've made
their way to the Unicode set altogether...

Please note that operating systems may not correctly display all these
characters, since they are quite unusual. In order to be able to see them
properly, an appropriate font such as the [Hanazono
Minchō](http://fonts.jp/hanazono/) typeface has to be installed first.

Another way to have a look at them is to access the relevant PDF code charts
from the official Unicode web site. They are found in the following blocks:

  * [CJK IDEOGRAPH EXTENSION A](http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3400.pdf) (7MB)

  * [CJK IDEOGRAPH EXTENSION B](http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20000.pdf) (40.5MB)

  * [CJK IDEOGRAPH EXTENSION F](http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2CEB0.pdf) (4.5MB)
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According to Wiktionary[](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%A0%86%AD) this
may be an ancient form of 雲 meaning cloud According to
Wiktionary[](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%A0%AA%B3) this may be 虎
(Tiger) in an ancient form. According to
Wiktionary[](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%A1%A6%B9) this is government
based on the similarity to 官. And lastly is the ancient cursive form of 巨
[](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%A2%80%93). All of this from a simple
wiktionary search.
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