生
This character means ‘birth, life, to live, fresh, alive.’ In Japanese there are many pronunciations, including SEI and ikiru. In Chinese, it’s shēng. (The ē in shēng is known as the ‘first tone,’ and it is a high-pitched, steady tone. There are also second, third, and fourth tones, plus a neutral tone. More on that later.)
The idea is that the character represents a plant sprout
屮
rising up out of the earth
土.
This is quite clear in the archaic characters:
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