Scissors (Japanese kanji)

It is the Japanese kanji for scissors.

鋏 writes はさみ, the Japanese word for scissors or shears. The tool cuts with two blades. The character also names a blacksmith's gripping tongs as やっとこ and appears in compounds about a sword or its handle.

is 鋏 Chinese or Japanese?

Both; the everyday meaning depends on the language.

Japanese 鋏 means scissors. Chinese 鋏, whose simplified form is 铗, chiefly means metal tongs; Chinese dictionaries also record sword and sword-handle senses. The ordinary Chinese word for scissors is 剪刀 or 剪子.

The tool predates this difference: design research places early scissors in ancient Greece, probably for shearing wool, and Japanese evidence traces them through China to the Kofun period. By the Heian period, Japanese finds show scissors with U-shaped grips; by the late Edo period, they were household tools.

how do you type 鋏?

Type はさみ, then select 鋏.

On a Japanese input method editor (IME), enter はさみ or type hasami in Latin letters, convert to kanji, and choose the candidate. If 鋏 is missing from the list, use the IME's handwriting pad to draw it.

Fonts draw this character differently, so some strokes may vary by device. That changes its appearance, not its meaning.