Kanji for Whale

鯨 is the only character for whale. It is read kujira on its own and gei in compounds — 捕鯨 is whaling and 鯨油 is whale oil. The left side is 魚, the fish radical, which is how Japanese writing groups sea creatures regardless of biology; a whale is a mammal, but the character was formed long before that distinction mattered. The right-hand element, 京, supplies the sound rather than the sense, the usual pattern in kanji for animals and plants.

The whale carries a sense of scale rather than menace. 鯨飲馬食 — drinking like a whale and eating like a horse — is the set phrase for an enormous appetite, and 白鯨, the white whale, is the Japanese title of Moby-Dick.

Modern Japanese usually writes the animal as クジラ in katakana, especially in news and science writing, so 鯨 in kanji now reads as slightly literary or traditional.