VocabularyJLPT N5 · core

彼氏

かれし

hepburn kareshi

boyfriend

Part of speech · noun

Pattern visualization

no decomposition available

Examples

彼氏ができました。
I got a boyfriend.
彼氏と映画を見に行く。
I go to a movie with my boyfriend.

Collocations

彼氏 (kareshi, boyfriend)彼女 (kanojo, girlfriend / she)彼 (kare, he)元彼 (motokare, ex-boyfriend)恋人 (koibito, lover / partner)

Mnemonic

Kareshi (彼氏) is "boyfriend" — 彼 (kare, he) plus 氏 (shi, honorific suffix variant). The symmetrical pair: kareshi (boyfriend = he plus shi) and kanojo (girlfriend = 彼 + 女, he plus woman). The kanji 彼 was a third-person pronoun until the Edo period; the kareshi compound crystallized in the Meiji 1880s-1890s under English boyfriend influence. Trap: bare kare means "he" (third-person), but kareshi means "my boyfriend" — context decides. Kanojo follows the same logic — solo "kanojo" reads as "she," while "watashi no kanojo" is "my girlfriend." The Japanese renai (romance) cluster: koibito (lover, formal), kareshi / kanojo (casual), booifurendo / gaarufurendo (1990s loanword), paatonaa (partner, gender-neutral since the 2010s), motokare / motokano (ex-boyfriend / ex-girlfriend). The kokuhaku (告白, confession) rite uses tsukiatte kudasai (please date me) as the canonical line — acceptance opens the kareshi / kanojo relationship. Korean uses nam-chin / yeo-chin (shortened from nam-ja chingu / yeo-ja chingu); Chinese uses nan-pengyou / nu-pengyou. JLPT N5 kareshi pairs with the romance cultural cluster.

Quick check

Canonical line of the Japanese kokuhaku rite?