Straw rain cape character

Try みの in Japanese text input and inspect the candidate.

A Mandarin pinyin input method may also find the rain-cape word under suō. Either search can surface 蓑 or 簑, which share the garment meaning but are different characters; choose 簔 only when this exact variant is required.

What does 簔 mean?

It names a rain cape woven from plant fibers.

The garment word appears in the early Japanese dictionary Shinsen Jikyō, compiled around 898–901, and the 10th-century tale Ise Monogatari; a 12th-century illustrated scroll, Shigisan Engi, depicts a traveler wearing one. These attest the word and garment, not necessarily this exact written variant.

The cape served as workwear against rain, snow, sun, mud, and cold. In historical Japanese ritual contexts, a person wearing the cape-and-hat pair 蓑笠 could represent a traveler moving between worlds. Character histories connect the rainwear forms to 衰, once associated with grass clothing and later with “decline”; grass or bamboo markers distinguish the garment forms.