I love you in Japanese: 愛してる (aishiteru)
"I love you" in Japanese is 愛してる (aishiteru), from the verb 愛する (あいする, aisuru, “to love”). It's a big, serious word: day to day, Japanese speakers more often say 好き (すき, suki) or 大好き (だいすき, daisuki), and many couples rarely say any of them.
愛してる is the spoken short form of 愛している (aishite iru): the te-form of 愛する plus いる. In casual speech the い is often dropped, which gives 愛してる. The polite form is 愛しています (aishite imasu), though between partners the casual 愛してる is the one you'll usually hear.
It's written with one kanji, 愛, and three hiragana: し, て and る. Tap any of them to see how it's written and hear how it sounds.
Suki and daisuki: the everyday way to say I love you
好き is the word you'll hear most. The dictionary gives it two everyday meanings: liking a thing, and liking a person romantically. The same word that says you like sushi can also say you're in love. Context tells you which.
| Japanese | Reading | Romaji | Meaning | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 好き | すき | suki | liking; being fond of; to one's liking | Liking a thing: a food, a song, a hobby |
| 好き | すき | suki | liking (romantically); being in love with; beloved | Said about a person: being in love with them |
| 大好き | だいすき | daisuki | liking very much; loving (something or someone); adoring | Liking a lot: a partner, a parent, a pet, a dessert |
大好き is 好き with 大 ("big") in front. It's warm and very common, and like 好き it works for people and things alike.
Between partners, 好き and 大好き carry most of the feeling. The polite 好きです (suki desu) is often the form used to confess your feelings to someone (more on that below). By the words alone, the three go from lightest to strongest: 好き, 大好き, 愛してる. In practice, how you say it matters too: a quiet, serious 好き can mean more than a cheerful 大好き.
好き is the kanji 好 ("fond of") plus the hiragana き. Read aloud, it's す き.
Love in Japanese: 愛 (ai) and 恋 (koi)
"Love" as a noun has two main words in Japanese:
- 愛 (あい, ai, “love”) is the broad one. The dictionary glosses it "love; affection; care".
- 恋 (こい, koi, “(romantic) love”) is romantic love only.
Each has its verb: 愛する ("to love") and 恋する (こいする, koi suru, “to fall in love (with)”).
Many love words are built from these two kanji. 恋 is read こい on its own, and れん in words such as 恋愛 and 失恋:
| Japanese | Reading | Romaji | Meaning | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 恋愛 | れんあい | ren'ai | love; romance; tender passion | Romance; love as a topic |
| 愛情 | あいじょう | aijō | love; affection | Love and affection |
| 恋人 | こいびと | koibito | lover; sweetheart; boyfriend | Your partner |
| 初恋 | はつこい | hatsukoi | first love; puppy love | Your first love |
| 片思い | かたおもい | kataomoi | unrequited love; one-sided love | Loving someone who doesn’t love you back |
| 両思い | りょうおもい | ryōomoi | mutual love | When the feeling is mutual |
| 失恋 | しつれん | shitsuren | disappointed love; broken heart; unrequited love | A broken heart |
| 一目惚れ | ひとめぼれ | hitomebore | love at first sight; being taken with someone at the first meeting | Love at first sight |
| 好きになる | すきになる | sukininaru | to come to like; to become fond of; to fall in love | Falling for someone: the everyday way |
| 恋に落ちる | こいにおちる | koi ni ochiru | to fall in love | To fall in love (a bit literary, as in songs) |
| 恋しい | こいしい | koishii | yearned for; longed for; missed | Missing someone, longing for them |
The kanji 愛 and 恋
Both 愛 and 恋 contain 心, the kanji for "heart". In kanji dictionaries 心 is radical no. 61, the part they file both characters under. On its own, 心 is the word 心 (こころ, kokoro, “mind”).
| Kanji | Strokes | When Japanese children learn it | Readings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 愛 | 13 | Primary school, year 4 | アイ |
| 恋 | 10 | Secondary school | レン, こい |
| 心 | 4 | Primary school, year 2 | シン, こころ |
Older texts sometimes write 恋 as 戀, which the dictionary lists as an old form.
A kanji joke
A popular Japanese play on the kanji says 愛 is sincerity and 恋 is an ulterior motive. Look at where the heart sits: in the middle of 愛, at the bottom of 恋.
| Japanese | Reading | Romaji | Meaning | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 真心 | まごころ | magokoro | sincerity; true heart; devotion | 愛: the heart in the middle |
| 下心 | したごころ | shitagokoro | secret intention; ulterior motive | 恋: the heart at the bottom |
| 下心 | したごころ | shitagokoro | kanji "heart" radical at bottom | The dictionary even has this meaning |
It's a joke, not where the kanji come from. The Diamond Online writer who quotes it admits it isn't really true, but says it convinces you instantly.
Do Japanese people say 愛してる?
Many don't. In a 2025 survey, 47% of married people in Japan said they hadn't told their partner any words of love, such as 愛してる or 好き, that year.
That figure comes from the insurer Gibraltar Life's "Family Love Survey 2025". It was an online survey, run from 22 September to 2 October 2025, of 4,700 married people aged 20 to 69 across Japan (2,350 men and 2,350 women, unmarried couples living as married included). It asked how many times that year they had told their spouse or partner "words of love" (愛の言葉), such as 愛してる or 好き.
| Everyone | Men | Women | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Said words of love at least once in 2025 | 52.9% | 59.3% | 46.5% |
| Said none at all | 47.1% | 40.7% | 53.5% |
| Average number of times | 26.3 | 27.5 | 25.2 |
A few people say it a lot: 4.8% said 200 times or more. In 2024 the share who said any was a little higher (54.1%), and the average a little lower (24.7).
Two limits are worth knowing. The survey counts 愛してる and 好き together, so it doesn't tell us how often people say 愛してる itself. And it only asked married people.
The feeling that "I love you" doesn't fit Japanese is old. The novelist Natsume Sōseki left a note, quoting George Meredith's novel Vittoria, that says "I love you ハ日本ニナキformulaナリ": "I love you" is a formula Japan doesn't have. His colleague Ueda Bin (1908) and his student Kuriyagawa Hakuson (1922) also wrote that "I love you" can't be translated into Japanese.
Today, many learners are told that 愛してる sounds dramatic, like a line from a TV drama. We couldn't find a study that measures this, so take it as a common impression, not a rule.
Confessing your feelings: 告白 (kokuhaku)
In Japan, a relationship often starts with 告白 (こくはく, kokuhaku, “professing one's feelings (to someone one wants to go out with)”). A casual word for it is 告る (こくる, kokuru, “to confess one's love”), which the dictionary marks as slang. 告白 also means confessing a crime or a secret (that's the dictionary's first meaning), but between two people who like each other, everyone knows which one you mean.
If the answer is yes, the two of you start to 付き合う (つきあう, tsukiau): the dictionary gives "to go out with; to go steady with".
The sociologist Ōmori Misa, speaking to Diamond Online, says that putting weight on 告白 is said to be particular to Japan. In the order she describes, you confess, and if the answer is yes you become a couple; then come holding hands and meeting on days off. In France, America and other Western countries, she says she has heard, people mostly don't make a confession: a relationship often just starts on its own, without one.
The confession itself often uses 好き or 好きです rather than 愛してる.
Tsuki ga kirei desu ne: the moon is beautiful
月が綺麗ですね (つきがきれいですね, tsuki ga kirei desu ne, “the moon is beautiful, isn't it?”) is the most famous indirect "I love you". It's credited to the novelist Natsume Sōseki, who probably never said it. The story goes that, while teaching English, he told a student who had translated "I love you" word for word to say "the moon is beautiful" instead.
It's almost certainly a legend. Japanese Wikipedia, citing the researcher Kawashima Kōki (2020), says nothing in Sōseki's writings or records supports it, and no one close to him reported hearing it. The idea that a Japanese person says something like "nice moon" where a Westerner says "I love you" appears from the 1920s, and it seems to have been pinned on Sōseki from the 1970s. The oldest Sōseki version one researcher has found, a 1977 magazine column, doesn't even use 月が綺麗ですね: it has 月がとっても青いなあ, "the moon is so blue".
Its famous "reply" has a story too. 死んでもいいわ (しんでもいいわ, shinde mo ii wa, “I love you too”) is often presented as the answer to 月が綺麗ですね, which is why the dictionary glosses it "I love you too". It comes from the writer Futabatei Shimei's translation of Turgenev's Asya (片恋, 1896), where Asya says it. But the Russian word he was translating was "Ваша" ("yours"), not "I love you". Pairing the two lines as question and answer is modern popular lore, not old usage, and the dictionary marks 死んでもいいわ as rare and euphemistic.
Both are well-known lines, not things people say every day. Plainer words can carry the feeling too:
- 大切 (たいせつ, taisetsu, “precious”): someone who matters to you.
- 恋しい (above): missing someone.
When the same Gibraltar Life survey asked people what they would like to say to their family, ありがとう (arigatō, “thank you”) came far ahead, with 1,531 answers. "好き, 大好き, 愛している" came second, with 340.
What to call your partner in Japanese
These are the dictionary's words for a partner:
| Japanese | Reading | Romaji | Meaning | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 恋人 | こいびと | koibito | lover; sweetheart; boyfriend | Lover, boyfriend or girlfriend: the safe word |
| 彼氏 | かれし | kareshi | boyfriend | Boyfriend |
| 彼女 | かのじょ | kanojo | girlfriend | Girlfriend; its first meaning is "she" |
| あなた | あなた | anata | dear; honey | Familiar; its first meaning is just "you" |
| ラブラブ | ラブラブ | rabu rabu | lovey-dovey; head-over-heels in love | Colloquial; made in Japan from English "love love" |
In practice, many couples simply use names. In the Gibraltar Life survey, the most popular answer from men about how they'd like their partner to call them was their name with くん or さん (28.1%). For women it was their name on its own (29.7%). あなた as "dear" is in the dictionary too, but we found no source on how many couples still use it.
One word to avoid: 愛人 (あいじん, aijin) looks like "love" plus "person", but the dictionary glosses it "lover; mistress", and in modern Japanese it mainly means a partner in an affair. (In Chinese, 愛人 means a sweetheart or a spouse, so learners who know Chinese should take extra care.) For your partner, say 恋人.
"Love" also comes in katakana: ラブ (rabu, “love”), written ラ ブ, as in ラブラブ.
Practise the beginner words
好き, 大好き and 大切 are among the beginner (N5) words in this quiz, with their sound.
Questions about I love you in Japanese
What are the three ways to say I love you in Japanese?
The three common ways are 好き (suki), 大好き (daisuki) and 愛してる (aishiteru), from lightest to strongest by the words alone. 好き and 大好き are the ones people say most.
Is it aishiteru or daisuki?
Daisuki is the everyday choice for warm feelings. Aishiteru is the literal "I love you": it's more serious, and many people rarely say it.
Does suki mean I love you?
Yes: said to a person, 好き (suki) can mean "I love you". The dictionary gives "liking (romantically); being in love with" as one of its meanings. Said about a thing, it just means "like".
How do you say I love you in anime?
In anime, confessions often use 好き (suki) or 好きです (suki desu), the same as in real life. 愛してる is more often kept for bigger moments.
How do you say I love you too in Japanese?
"I love you too" in Japanese is 私も愛してる (watashi mo aishiteru) in casual speech. That's the reply native speakers gave on HiNative: 私 (わたし, watashi) ("I"), then も ("too"), then 愛してる. The dictionary marks 僕 (ぼく, boku) as a man's word for "I", so a man may start with 僕 instead. The literary reply is 死んでもいいわ, the line paired with the moon.
How do you say I love you indirectly in Japanese?
The famous example is 月が綺麗ですね, "the moon is beautiful", though the story that Sōseki invented it has no support. Plainer words such as 大切 (precious) can carry the feeling too.
What is the Japanese word for love?
The two words for love are 愛 (ai), love and affection in general, and 恋 (koi), romantic love. Their verbs are 愛する and 恋する.
What can I call my lover in Japanese?
Call your partner 恋人 (koibito), or 彼氏 (kareshi) for a boyfriend and 彼女 (kanojo) for a girlfriend. Don't say 愛人 (aijin): it usually means a mistress or an affair partner.
How do you write love in Japanese?
Love is written 愛 or 恋, two kanji that both contain 心, "heart". Tap 愛 or 恋 to see them stroke by stroke.
Sources
- Readings, meanings and tags: JMdict (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0), including its notes that 告る is slang, 死んでもいいわ is rare and euphemistic, 戀 is an old form of 恋, ラブラブ is colloquial and made in Japan, and あなた as "dear" is familiar.
- Strokes, school grades and the heart radical: KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0).
- The survey: Gibraltar Life, 家族愛に関する調査2025 (Family Love Survey 2025, PDF, in Japanese).
- Sōseki's note and the moon story: Japanese Wikipedia, 夏目漱石 § 月が綺麗ですね; niguruta, 「月が綺麗ですね・死んでもいいわ」検証 (the 1977 column, Futabatei's "Ваша", and the two lines presented as a set).
- Futabatei's かた恋 (1896): Japanese Wikipedia, 二葉亭四迷.
- 愛人 in Japanese and in Chinese: Japanese Wikipedia, 愛人.
- "I love you too": native speakers' answers on HiNative, How do you say "I love you too" in Japanese?.
- 告白: Ōmori Misa in Diamond Online, 「好きな人に告白」は日本特有の「恋愛の順序」だった!?.
- The 真心 and 下心 joke: Diamond Online, 「愛という字は真心、恋という字は下心」を超える秀逸すぎる文字遊び.
- Reviewed by two independent reviews; the points about how 愛してる sounds, the order of strength, which words confessions use, the "I love you too" reply and あなた as "dear" are waiting for a native speaker's check.