Han character 今

It marks the current moment.

Mandarin reads it jīn, written in pinyin, a Latin-letter sound guide. Japanese reads it as いま (ima) alone; compounds also use コン (kon) and キン (kin).

Where does 今 come from?

Its early forms appear in Shang oracle-bone writing.

Carved on animal bones and turtle shells, these inscriptions use 今 for “today”; Western Zhou bronze inscriptions use it for “now.” Later scripts carry the form forward. Proposed first shapes include a tongue, closed mouth, groaning, or bell.

The Kojiki, an early Japanese chronicle dated to 712, records the word いま; this attests the word, not the graph’s origin.