Help with kanji recognition

Question

I'm trying to work out what kanji this is:

So I went into Jisho and selected the 虫 radical, but can't see it on anywhere on the list. I tried adding 日, 百 and ヘ radicals too but no luck.

The closest one I could find is 蝕 (which contains 虫 and 食) but this doesn't look quite right

Am I just dealing with a weird font here, or am I using the wrong radical?

Any general tips for this type of recognition problem are much appreciated.

Answer 1

Yes, this is to do with rendering. Strictly speaking, you should only see the second image in Japanese computer text and not the first image:

• 蝕 is not part of the Jōyō Kanji set, which means that Japan (and Japanese language fonts) will only officially support its Kyūjitai form;
• 食 was originally derived from the components 亼 (mouth 口 written upside down) and 皀 (a lidded storage vessel for food), and it had nothing to do with 良 or 艮 despite their similar looking appearances;
• Characters which contained a component involving 皀 will have the bottom portion looking like your second image in traditional (Kyūjitai) forms and looking like your first image in simplified (Shinjitai) forms. You can verify this by comparing e.g. the traditional/simplified versions of 概, or the traditional/simplified versions of 飲. Note that both 概 and 飲 are part of the Jōyō Kanji set, so they should be rendered in their simplified versions in Japanese text.