What ㊧ means
It points to the left one: the left person, part or column. 左 means “left” (hidari in Japanese, zuǒ in Chinese, jwa in Korean). The circle turns the word into a compact tag, much as someone might write “(L)” in English. In Japanese print you can meet it in a photo caption naming the person on the left, beside a diagram showing the left side, or in a table. It is a neutral position marker: no arrow, no instruction to turn, and nothing to do with left-wing politics.
The five circled positions ㊧ came from Japanese personal-computer character sets, where they sat among the extra symbols added for Japanese office documents. Unicode took them over in its first CJK repertoire so that old files would convert without loss. Because they began as manufacturer extras, older software and some fonts show them as a box or a plain 左.
How do I type ㊧?
Use its code 32A7, or pick it from a symbol viewer. Ordinary keyboards have no key for it. If the circle isn't essential, writing 左 or (左) is what many Japanese writers do anyway, and it displays everywhere.
Don't confuse it with
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Related characters
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Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
2Is ㊧ an emoji?
No. It is an ordinary text character, so it takes the colour and style of the font, with no colourful emoji version.
Why do I see a box instead of ㊧?
Your font lacks it. Installing or switching to a Japanese or full CJK font usually fixes it; the character in the text is still correct.
More like this
10
Collections with ㊧
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How to type or find ㊧
- Also called
- 丸付き左 · circled hidari · circled 左
- Search it as
- ㊧ · circled left · 左 in a circle · 丸付き文字 左 · left label symbol
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
㊧\32A7Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.