Kanji: a guide to Japanese characters

Kanji have their roots in China, but Japan made them part of its own writing system, with Japanese readings and uses. Today they share the page with hiragana and katakana. Recognising a character in Chinese can give you a clue to its meaning in Japanese, but its pronunciation—and sometimes the meaning of the whole word—can be quite different.¹

Two thousand—or fifty thousand?

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The enormous Dai Kan-Wa Dictionary contains around 50,000 characters.² Japan’s 2,136 jōyō kanji are the official guide to character use in everyday writing.³ That gives you a much smaller, longer-term literacy goal. You can start recognising useful words much earlier, and names, literature and specialist subjects will still introduce characters beyond that list.

Same roots, different shapes

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Mainland China primarily uses simplified Chinese characters, while Taiwan uses traditional characters. Japan has its own character forms and simplifications, so Japanese kanji do not match either set exactly.¹ Take the dragon:

You will encounter 龍 in Japanese too. These three versions show how a shared character can take different shapes.⁴

Wondering how all those characters fit on a keyboard? Try typing in Japanese to see how a reading turns into a choice of kanji.

Explore how characters fit together in the map of kanji. Open 劣 into 少 and 力, then follow each component into other characters.