What is this kanji ? Looks like 七 three times

Question

Tonight I went to a sushi restaurant. It's called かね喜{き} as is visible on their inkan and in the company name.

However, on their website it seems calligraphied differently but maybe I am just bad at identifying handwriting.

Even more strange is the sign there that does not look like 喜 at all. According to the website it seems to be the way the sushi bar of the chain are called, but that does not help with why it is written this way.

Can anyone help me ? I have looked around in my phone (Aedict) on on Weblio, to no avail.

Thanks a lot !

Answer 1

That is the [草書体]{そうしょたい} (= "cursive script") for the kanji 「喜」, meaning "happiness", "delight", etc.

http://image.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?rkf=2&ei=UTF-8&p=%E5%96%9C+%E8%8D%89%E6%9B%B8%E4%BD%93

This is the reason that one's 77th birthday is called 「[喜寿]{きじゅ}」.

More technically speaking, though, it is the "re-block-ized" and stylized form of the original cursive script for 「喜」. The original cursive is shown at top left of the web page above.

Answer 2

㐂 U+3402 is indeed a non-standard form of 喜 U+559C and is graphically made of 七 U+4E03 three times.