CJK Compatibility Ideograph FA2A

It means cooked rice, food, or a meal—the same word as 飯.

The underlying character appears in early Chinese bronze inscriptions. Early Chinese use described eating; its meaning later extended to cooked rice, then food or a meal. The Japanese chronicle Nihon Shoki records the reading いい (two Japanese i vowels in sequence, like “ee-ee”) in 720; Man’yōshū, a poetry collection, records it in the 8th century. Later Japanese readings include めし (“meh-shee”) and はん (“hahn,” with a light h).

The food radical in 飯 appears in the left-side form 飠, related to 食. 饭 is the simplified Chinese form of 飯. FA2A is the compatibility-coded version, not a second food word.

Why is 飯 different from 飯?

It preserves an encoding distinction, not a second meaning.

FA2A is an IBM compatibility code point: it keeps a separate source distinction when older character data is converted to Unicode and back. Unicode pairs 飯 with the unified ideograph 飯.

For new text, use 飯 in Japanese or traditional Chinese and 饭 in simplified Chinese. Keep 飯 when a record requires this exact source character. NFKC or NFKD compatibility normalization can fold 飯 to 飯.