万
まん · man · JLPT N5 · noun
ten thousand
💴 man = ten thousand: one MAN-sized stack, as on the 10,000 yen note (ichi-man)
Japanese counts big numbers in units of 10,000, not 1,000. So 1 man = 10,000 and 10 man = 100,000. The 10,000-yen bill is called ichi-man en: one man, the largest note, so a single man is a lot of money.
万 — top 一 + 𠃌 (hook) over 丿
Originally a pictograph of a scorpion, used in oracle bone script. It was borrowed phonetically to mean 'ten thousand' and the original scorpion sense was lost. The traditional form 萬 shows the scorpion more clearly; 万 is a simplified variant long used as a common shorthand.