Kanji (Japanese Characters)

Kanji (漢字, "Han characters") are the Chinese characters that Japanese adopted, first on imported seals and mirrors in the first centuries AD and as a writing system by about the 5th century. Japanese dictionaries hold some 50,000 of them, but written Japanese runs on a much smaller official set: the jōyō kanji (常用漢字, "regular-use kanji"), the list the Japanese government publishes as the standard for laws, newspapers, broadcasting and school. The current list, issued by the Cabinet on 30 November 2010, has exactly 2,136 characters, and every one of them is on this page.

The list has a history. The 1946 tōyō kanji had 1,850 characters and was meant as a ceiling on what print could use; the 1981 jōyō list raised it to 1,945 and made it a guideline rather than a limit; the 2010 revision added 196 kanji that word processors had made easy to write, such as 鬱 depression, 嵐 storm, 丼 rice bowl, 謎 riddle, 虹 rainbow, 猫 cat and 誰 who, and dropped five that had become rare (勺 錘 銑 脹 匁, old measures and foundry terms). Kanji outside the list are not wrong, just explained: a newspaper prints a reading in small kana beside them.

The order here is the one Japanese learners know. First the kyōiku kanji (教育漢字), the 1,026 kanji that the Ministry of Education assigns to the six grades of primary school, grade by grade, each grade in the order of the ministry's own table, which sorts by reading: grade 1 begins 一 ichi, 右 u, 雨 u, 円 en, 王 ō, 音 on. Then come the remaining 1,110 kanji taught in secondary school, in the order of the official 常用漢字表, which is also by reading, from 亜 a to 腕 wan. Row labels count through each group, so "41–60" in grade 1 is the third row of the first-grade table. The Hiragana and Katakana collections hold the two other Japanese scripts, and Japanese Characters puts all three together.

Kanji by grade: what Japanese children learn from 一 to 論

A Japanese six-year-old learns 80 kanji in grade 1: the numbers 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 百 千, the seven that name the days of the week 日 月 火 水 木 金 土 (sun, moon, fire, water, tree, metal, earth), nature 山 川 花 林 石 雨 空, the body 手 目 口 耳 足, and school 学 校 先 生 本 字. Grade 2 adds 160, including the seasons 春 夏 秋 冬 and the family 父 母 兄 姉 弟 妹; grade 3 adds 200 (the town: 医 薬 病 院 駅 鉄 銀, and 漢 itself); grade 4 adds 202, grade 5 193 and grade 6 191, ending the primary list at 1,026.

Grade 4 holds a recent change. Until 2020 the kyōiku list had 1,006 kanji; the 2017 curriculum, in force from April 2020, added the 20 kanji that children need to write the names of Japan's prefectures, among them 阪 of 大阪 Osaka, 奈 of 奈良 Nara, 岡 of 福岡 Fukuoka, 熊 of 熊本 Kumamoto and 鹿 of 鹿児島 Kagoshima. Most of those had only joined the jōyō list in 2010, which is why a 1990s textbook will not have them.

Secondary school covers the other 1,110 over six years, and the Kanji Kentei proficiency test's level 2 certifies exactly the full jōyō list. The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) stopped publishing kanji lists in 2010; the usual working figures are roughly 100 kanji for N5, 300 for N4, 650 for N3, 1,000 for N2 and 2,000 for N1, so N5 and N4 learners live almost entirely in grades 1 to 3 of this page, and N1 is close to the whole list. For names, Japan keeps a separate jinmeiyō list of 863 extra kanji allowed in given names, such as 凛 and 翔, which are not here.

How kanji work: readings, furigana, and the kanji Japan made itself

Almost every kanji has two kinds of reading. The on'yomi is the sound borrowed from Chinese, used in compounds: 山 is san in 富士山 Fujisan and 火山 kazan "volcano". The kun'yomi is the native Japanese word the character was matched to: the same 山 alone is yama, "mountain". A learner's chart gives on'yomi in katakana and kun'yomi in hiragana, as the official table does. Some kanji carry many readings: the jōyō table lists twelve each for 下 (ka, ge, shita, shimo, moto, sageru, kudaru, orosu …) and 生 (sei, shō, ikiru, umareru, nama …), while 菊 chrysanthemum has just one, kiku.

Small kana printed above or beside a kanji, called furigana, show its reading; children's books, manga and newspapers use them for anything outside the list or hard to guess. Kana written after a kanji, okurigana, carry the grammar: 食べる taberu "eat", 食べた tabeta "ate", with 食 unchanged. The mark 々 repeats the kanji before it (人々 hitobito "people"); it is a symbol, not a kanji, and sits in the Japanese Text Symbols collection.

A few dozen characters were invented in Japan, the kokuji: 働 "work" (a person 亻 beside 動 "move"), 畑 "dry field" (fire 火 beside rice field 田), 峠 "mountain pass" (mountain 山, up 上, down 下), 込 "crowded", 匂 "scent", 枠 "frame", 塀 "fence", 栃 "horse chestnut" of Tochigi and 腺 "gland", coined by a 19th-century anatomist. They look like Chinese characters and are encoded alongside them, but Chinese never used them. Japan also simplified many shapes after 1946 into shinjitai "new forms": 国 for 國, 学 for 學, 体 for 體, 竜 for 龍, 円 for 圓. Mainland China simplified differently (国 学 体 but 龙 圆 气), and Taiwan kept the old forms, so a Japanese kanji is often a third shape between the two; see Chinese Characters and Traditional Chinese Characters.

Kanji meanings people look up: love, strength, dream, names and tattoos

The kanji most often searched for on their own are single words with a clear meaning: 愛 ai love, 心 kokoro heart or mind, 夢 yume dream, 力 chikara strength, 和 wa harmony (and Japan itself, as in 和食 Japanese food), 美 bi beauty, 誠 makoto sincerity, 忍 nin endure (the first half of 忍者 ninja), 侍 samurai, 竜 ryū dragon, 魂 tamashii soul, 翼 tsubasa wings and 桜 sakura cherry blossom. All of these are jōyō kanji and are in the grid above; tap one to copy it.

Two cautions before a kanji goes on skin, jewellery or a shop sign. First, one character rarely equals one English word: 気 is spirit, mood, air and energy at once, and 恋 is romantic longing while 愛 is the broader love, so 恋 on a family gift reads oddly. Second, meaning changes in combination: 死 is death, but 必死 is "desperate", and 生 is life, raw, student and birth depending on its neighbour. Check the word, not the character, and look it up with a Japanese speaker or a dictionary that shows real compounds. A Japanese person's name is written with kanji chosen by their parents, so a foreign name has no "correct" kanji; Japanese writes foreign names in katakana.

Kanji also carry the mood of a year. Every 12 December, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation announces the Kanji of the Year, brushed by the chief priest of Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto on a huge sheet of washi paper after a public vote: 熊 "bear" in 2025, a year of record bear encounters, 税 "tax" in 2023, and 金 "gold" five times, always in a Summer Olympics year. Japan's era names are two jōyō kanji as well: 令和 Reiwa (since 2019), 平成 Heisei, 昭和 Shōwa.

How to type kanji, and which fonts show them properly

Kanji are typed by conversion, never one by one. Add the Japanese input method (Windows: Settings, Time & language, Language & region, add Japanese, then switch with Windows + Space; Mac: Keyboard, Input Sources, Japanese – Romaji, switch with Control + Space or the Globe key; phones: add the Japanese keyboard). Type a word in rōmaji, kanji appears as かんじ, press Space and the candidates 漢字, 感じ, 幹事 appear; Enter accepts. Single kanji work the same way: type yume, Space, 夢. In Microsoft Word you can also type a code point and press Alt + X: 6F22 Alt + X gives 漢. To find a kanji you can see but not read, draw it in Google Translate's handwriting input or the Windows IME Pad, or copy it from this page; each character links to its own article with readings and meaning.

Every jōyō kanji is a standard Unicode character, so they paste into any chat, document or design app. 2,135 of them sit in the main CJK Unified Ideographs block that has been in Unicode since 1992; the one exception is 𠮟 "scold", whose official 2010 form lives at U+20B9F in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B and shows as an empty box in some older fonts. In practice almost everyone types the common form 叱 instead, and the same is true of three other kanji whose official shapes differ from the everyday ones: 剝 is usually typed 剥, 塡 as 填 and 頰 as 頬. This page lists the official forms, as the Unicode Unihan database tags them with its kJoyoKanji property.

Fonts matter more for kanji than for most scripts. Because Unicode unifies Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, the same code point is drawn with slightly different strokes in each country: 直, 骨, 海 and 令 look different in a Chinese and a Japanese font. On a web page, mark Japanese text lang="ja" or set a Japanese font so the browser picks Japanese shapes. Windows ships Yu Gothic and Meiryo, macOS and iOS ship Hiragino Sans, and the free Noto Sans JP and Noto Serif JP cover the whole list including 𠮟. A page or app set to Chinese will silently show Chinese shapes, which Japanese readers notice at once.