Radical 173
Radical 173 or radical rain (雨部) meaning "rain" is one of the 9 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 8 strokes. This radical character transforms into ⻗ when used as an upper component.
In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are 298 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.
雨 is also the 170th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China, with the component form ⻗ listed as its associated indexing component.

Evolution
Derived characters
Variant forms
This radical is printed and written differently in modern Traditional Chinese than in other languages. In Chinese as used in Mainland China (whether Simplified or Traditional) and Japanese, the four dots in the character are almost identical, while in modern standard Traditional Chinese as used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the four dots point inwards to the center of the character, despite the former form is also widely used in Traditional Chinese publications.

Handwritten forms

Kanji
This character is one of the Kyōiku kanji or Kanji taught in elementary school in Japan. It is a first grade kanji.

Literature
Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-774-1.

References
External links

Unihan Database - U+96E8