Several parts combine into one character.

Compound ideograph: grass (艸 — abstracted into the upper strokes) above 日 (sun). The encoded scene: fresh grass sprouting under the sun. Spring captured as the literal moment vegetation responds to lengthening daylight. Identical across 繁體 / 新字体 / 简体. The character has stylized over millennia until the grass component is barely recognizable, but the etymology remains vivid.

Like many CJK season-words, 春 carries metaphorical weight beyond literal spring. It encodes "youth / new beginning / vitality": 青春 (qīngchūn / seishun, "blue-spring" = youth, springtime of life — a cultural keyword in Japanese coming-of-age literature and anime), 春情 (chūnqíng / shunjō, romantic feelings — "spring emotion").

Mandarin: chūn, level 1st tone. 春天 (chūntiān, spring), 春节 (Chūnjié, Chinese New Year — by far the most important annual festival, anchored at the lunar new year and the start of spring), 春风 (chūnfēng, spring wind / kindly influence), 青春 (qīngchūn, youth), 春联 (chūnlián, Spring Festival couplets — the red-paper poems pasted on doorframes).

Japanese: on-reading シュン (shun) for compounds — 青春 (seishun, youth — central Japanese cultural concept, drives entire genres of manga/anime), 新春 (shinshun, New Year / new spring — a polite seasonal greeting in January), 立春 (risshun, "establishment of spring" — the official start of spring around February 4 in the East Asian solar calendar). Kun-reading はる (haru) is the everyday word — 春 (haru, spring), 春休み (haruyasumi, spring break), 春一番 (haru ichiban, "first storm of spring" — the gusty wind that signals winter's end). And in food vocabulary: 春巻き (harumaki, spring rolls).

The Japanese cultural keyword 青春 (seishun) has no perfect English equivalent — it captures the bittersweet, fleeting nature of youth, the school years, first loves, summer break feelings — all bundled into "blue-spring".

Memory aid: grass + sun = the season grass remembers how to grow.