Are there no rounded or circular strokes in any 漢字？

Question

Forgive me if this question seems foolish, but perhaps curiosity has gotten the best of me 'cause I am asking away. Every time I sit down to practice some good ol' kanji writing, I can't help but notice the lack of rounded shapes, circles, spheres, etc.. Sure, there are some curved strokes, but even in words that speak of "circular" and "rounded" things (丸、円...), there is nothing remotely "round" in the kanji to speak of.

I know very little about the etymology of kanji, so perhaps I am embarrassing myself by asking this question. However, I am curious to know -- were there ever circular strokes in kanji? What's the story, if there is one at all...?

Answer 1

No need to be embarrassed. We all start somewhere.

I first erroneously answered by saying, "there are no rounded stokes in Japanese kanji." However, only after I submitted my answer did I notice you were specifically asking if there were ever rounded strokes. D'oh!

Okay, so... to start, there are, as you know, no current circular strokes in kanji.

However, if you go back far enough into the origins of kanji, you can see that they were based on pictographs, which can be curvy and all sorts of shapes. So, in a way, yes, there used to be rounded shapes.

The trick is where do you draw the line on when they can be considered "Japanese" kanji. As you know, kanji was brought over from China and then adapted to fit Japanese needs.

It has evolved, but I believe that by the time Japan started using the characters, they were already formalized on the mainland and no longer had any distinct circles. (History available here).

So I think a sensible answer could be that Japanese kanji has never had round shapes.

However, I think one could argue that kanji itself, if you go back far enough, had some circular(ish) shapes in it.