TsukiGatsu

⽉, Moon, Mesiats

TsukiGatsu is a set of four visually similar Unicode characters related to moon and month; they are easy to be confused in typography and text processing. These characters are:

1. X2F49 ⽉
   
2. X2E9D ⺝
   
3. X2EBC ⺼
   
4. X6708 月
   

In Japanese, a TsukiGatsu character may mean Moon or month: name of month or unit of time.
In Japanese, a TsukiGatsu may sound つき, tsuki or がつ, gatsu, or げつ, getsu.
Characters of TsukiGatsu can also have other meanings and pronunciations depending on the context.

月: つき, tsuki, moon

月: がつ, gatsu

Name TsukiGatsu

At least as of 2026, variation of glyphs of characters of TsukiGatsu, from one software to another, from one font to another,
is stronger, than variation between views of these characters at the same font.
At TORI, all the views of the TsukiGatsu characters are qualified as the same glyph.

The similar appearance of different characters causes confusions. In order to handle them, the glyph needs to have a name. While no established name for this glyph is found, in TORI, it is denoted with term «TsukiGatsu».

This term is used as name of the set of 4 characters, but also as qualification of each of these characters.

Confuse

The problem with the TsukiGatsu is deeper than just learning of Japanese.

Even a native Japanese speaker looking at characters ⽉, ⺝, ⺼, 月, is unlikely to guess:
Which of them is character X2F49 («KANGXI RADICAL MOON» ) ?
Which of them is character X2E9D («CJK RADICAL MOON» ?
Which of them is character X2EBC («CJK RADICAL MEAT» )?
Which of them is character X6708 («CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6708» )?

This confusion appears as the interpretation of printed text, announces, billboards, etc.

Similar confusions appear with other kanjis; visually-identical characters and cause conflicts. They can be mitigated using the dumping routine «du.t»; it reveals the numbers and the encodings of characters. Example of the use:

php du.t "⽉⺝⺼月"

While the character of this glyph is not identified, the generic term TsukiGatsu can be used instead of absurdly-complicated construction «⽉ or ⺝ or ⺼ or 月».

Uniglif and Tarja

In sci-fi «Tartaria», the default font «Uniglif» is mentioned. In that font, all the ascii characters, the TwoBitCharacters and the ThreeBitCharacters have standard and well-distinguishable glyphs providing bijective relation between set of glyphs and set of characters (at least for the first 3 parts of the Unicode table). In century 22, the standardization of the 4 bit characters is still under discussion: they are too many of them; it is difficult to design some millions well-distinguishable glyphs.

In real life, many usual glyphs have not yet assigned unique and established Unicode numbers.

In order to avoid the confusions, the technical language Tarja can be used instead of Japanese.

At the translation from Japanese to Tarja of a Kanji from set TsukiGatsu, words つき, tsuki, がつ, gatsu, or げつ, getsu can be used dependently on the context, as well as the words borrowed from English: Moon, Luna or Month.

As an alternative, the explicit number of the character can be indicated instead, X2F49, X2E9D, C2EBC or X6708.

As an alternative, the names by cite "util.unicode" can be used:
«KANGXI RADICAL MOON» ,
«CJK RADICAL MOON» ,
«CJK RADICAL MEAT» or
«CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6708»
- until more convenient names and/or glyphs for characters of set TsukiGatsu be established.

Reuse the glyph

Narrowed glyph of TsukiGatsu appears as part of glyphs of other, less ambiguous kanjis. Few examples are collected in this section.

脳

脳 // No // brain

腕

腕 // ude // arm ; see also «宛»

膝

膝 // hiza // knee

棚

Glyph 棚 (棚 X68DA) seems to be composed of
narrowed glyph "ki"(tree) (木 (木 6728) or ⽊ (⽊ X2F4A)) at left and
two narrowed glyphs of the TsukiGatsu set at right.

In Japanese and in Tarja, 棚 may mean tent, awning; booth; shed, Shelve(s) (Book Shelve(s))
In Japanese and in Tarja, 棚 can be pronounced as ホウ, hou⁠ or たな.
棚 may have also other meanings and pronunciations dependently on the context.

Warning

Publications about characters of the TsukiGatsu set are collected and analyzed in TORI with scientific goals.

The analysis and the interpretation above should not be interpreted as an appeal for the extrajudicial execution of the font/unicode designers who did not supply some popular glyphs with unique unicode numbers.

The more civilized solution would be to convince them to develop some realistic default analogy of the fantastic Uniglif.

The description suggested may require correction(s) by a native Japanese speaker.

Attribution

ChatGPT helped to improve this article.

Some notes by ChatGPT are not taken into account in the article, but they are copypasted below; minimal TORIfication is applied.

Notes by ChatGPT

Among your four characters:

| code  | type                  |
| ----- | --------------------- |
| X6708 | real ideograph        |
| X2F49 | Kangxi radical symbol |
| X2E9D | radical component     |
| X2EBC | radical component     |

The set TsukiGatsu mixes three types of Unicode characters: a unified ideograph (X6708), a Kangxi radical (X2F49), and radical component symbols (X2E9D, X2EBC).

Historically the radicals for **moon** (月) and **meat** (肉) were written differently. When used as side components in kanji, however, both radicals became visually similar. Because of this typographic convergence, many modern fonts render the components ⺝, ⺼, and 月 almost identically.

This explains the **core reason for the confusion**.

Your project is actually doing something **Unicode itself never did**:

You are documenting **glyph-confusion families**.

Unicode documents:

• characters
• code points
• radicals

but **not confusion sets**.

So pages like

• TsukiGatsu
• Sakana
• Chikara

are effectively a **taxonomy of visual ambiguity**.

That is a genuinely interesting idea.

References

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/月 月（つき、英: Moon、羅: Luna、独: Mond、仏: Lune）は、地球で唯一の安定的に存在する[[天\\然の衛星である（地球のその他の衛星については、「月以外の地球の衛星」を参照）。

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/月_(暦) 月（つき、がつ、げつ、英: month）は、時間の単位の一つ。年と日の中間にある単位で[1]、一年を12分した日数である[2]。現在世界で標準的に用いられるグレゴリオ暦[3]は、修正元のユリウス暦の月を汲み、1か月の日数は30もしくは31日を基本とし、2月のみ通常（平年）は28日、400年間に97回ある閏年には29日としている[4][5]。 ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_130 Not to be confused with Radical 74 (月 "moon"). The side radical of Radical 130 is written as ⺼.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_74 Not to be confused with Radical 130, the "meat radical", where the side radical is written as ⺼. // Radical 74 (U+2F49) ..

https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/character.jsp?a=2EBC ⺼ 2EBC CJK RADICAL MEAT Han Script confuse: none

2025.05.27. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/b05620/ Body Language: Kanji with the Meat-Moon Radical (月) Language Culture May 27, 2025 Richard Medhurst All kinds of Japanese words for parts of the body have kanji with the “meat-moon” radical, including the brain (脳), shoulders (肩), knees (膝), and arms (腕). The “meat-moon” radical 月 can be found in many kanji[ connected with the body. It gets its name (nikuzuki in Japanese), because these characters are associated with niku, meat or flesh (肉), but their radical—a simplified form of the character—is the same as tsuki, “moon” (月). Once, these two radicals were differentiated, but the similar appearance of 肉 and 月 when reduced in size as part of a kanji has led to 月 being used to represent both. ..

Keywords

«du.t», «CJK», «Confusion», «Japanese», «Kanji», «KanjiLiberal», «KanjiRadical», «Meat», «Month», «Moon», «Niku», «Tarja», «TsukiGatsu», «Unicode», «Uniglif», «X2F49» «⽉», «X2E9D» «⺝», «X2EBC» «⺼», «X6708» «月», «X68DA» «棚», «X8089» «肉»,