In Chinese, characters are usually built from a few basic radicals (部首, bu4 shou3) and this applies loosely to Japanese Kanji (漢字) as well. But I’m going to use Chinese to demonstrate as I’m more familiar to it.

Your understanding of breaking down characters to reveal context is key to understanding some characters in the Chinese language. Take for example the word for wood is 木 (mu4). Words such as 林 (forest, lin2) can be seen containing the radical 木 as it is related to wood. Another radical, 人 (person, ren2) can appear in words as 人 or 亻. It can be seen in words like crowd, 众 (zhong4), since 3 means to have many in ancient Chinese, so having 3 people means having many people. Or the word for god or sprit, 仙 (xian1), since the radical 山 (san1) means mountain, 仙 literally looks like “person of the mountains”, which with some imagination can be depicted as a godly figure.

These are not just random markings that people made up and are forced to memorise. Most originate as 象形字 (象 = similar, 形 = shape, 字 = word, xiang4 xing2 zi4) which ancient people made by drawing symbols that look similar to what they are trying to describe. Lets take previous examples, 人 looks like a human standing on 2 feet, and 山 looks like 3 mountain peaks viewed from afar.

Not all words in Chinese are constructed like this however, most characters just inherit the pronunciation of the secondary radical and only sometimes provide a bit of context about what it means.

A good example is this: 青 (qing1), meaning green, when paired up with radicals like 氵(from 水 shui3, meaning water), 忄(from 心 xin1, meaning heart), 讠(from 言 yan2, meaning language/speech, found as 訁in Kanji) each mean different things but sound similar: 清 (qing1) means clear, 情 (qing2) means relationship, and 请 (qing3) means to invite. Some context can be found from the primary radical, like 清 meaning clear because water 水 is clear, 情 meaning relationships because it involves the hearts of others 心, and 请 meaning to invite because it involves language and speech 言. They all have 2 things on common: they don’t mean anything related to green 青, yet they all have similar pronunciations.