Kanji

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the characters used in Japanese writing. For other uses, see Kanji (disambiguation).
Kanji (; Japanese pronunciation: [kandi] listen), or kan'ji, are the adopted logographic Chinese
characters (hnz)[1] that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana and katakana.
The Japanese term kanji for the Chinese characters literally means "Han characters"[2] and is written using
the same characters as the Chinese word hnz (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ).[3]

Japanese writing
Components

Kanji

Stroke order

Radicals

Kyiku kanji

Jy kanji

Jinmeiy kanji

Hygaiji

List of kanji by stroke count

List of kanji by concept

Kana

Hiragana

Katakana

Hentaigana

Man'ygana

Sogana

Gojon

Typographic symbols

Japanese punctuation

Iteration mark

Uses

Syllabograms

Furigana

Okurigana

Braille

Romanization

Rmaji

Hepburn (colloquial)

Kunrei (ISO)

Nihon (ISO transliteration)

JSL (transliteration)

Wpuro (keyboard)

Type
Languages
Parent
systems

Kanji
Logographic
Old Japanese, Japanese
Oracle bone script

Seal script

Clerical script

Kaishu

Kanji

Sister
systems
ISO 15924
Direction
Unicode
alias

Hanja, Zhuyin, traditional Chinese,

simplified Chinese, Nom, Khitan
script, Jurchen script
Hani, 500

Left-to-right
Han

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols.

Without proper rendering support, you may see
question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of
Unicode characters.

Chinese characters

Scripts

Precursors

Oracle-bone

Bronze

o Seal (bird-worm
o large
o small)

Clerical

Regular

Semi-cursive

Cursive

Type styles

Imitation Song

Ming
Sans-serif

Properties

Strokes (order)

Radicals
Classification

Variants

Character-form standards

o Kangxi Dictionary
o Xin Zixing

General Standard Chinese

Characters (PRC)

Graphemes of Commonly-used
Chinese Characters (Hong Kong)

Standard Typefaces for Chinese

Characters (ROC Taiwan)
Grapheme-usage standards

Graphemic variants

General Standard Characters (PRC)

Jy kanji (Japan)

Previous standards

Commonly-used Characters (PRC)

Frequently-used Characters (PRC)

Ty kanji (Japan)

Reforms

Chinese

Traditional characters

Simplified characters
o (first round
o second round)

Debate

Japanese

Old (Kyjitai)

New (Shinjitai)

Ryakuji

Korean

Yakja

Singaporean

Table of Simplified Characters

Homographs

Literary and colloquial readings

Use in particular scripts

Written Chinese

Zetian characters

N Shu

Kanji (Kokuji)
Kana (Man'ygana)

Idu

Hanja (Gukja)

Nom
Sawndip

For a list of words relating to kokuji, see the Japanese-coined CJKV characters category of words
in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Contents

1 History

2 Orthographic reform and lists of kanji

o 2.1 Kyiku kanji
o 2.2 Jy kanji
o 2.3 Jinmeiy kanji
o 2.4 Hygaiji
o 2.5 Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji

2.5.1 Gaiji

3 Total number of kanji

4 Readings

o 4.1 On'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading)

o 4.2 Kun'yomi (Japanese reading)
o 4.3 Mixed readings
o 4.4 Special readings
o 4.5 Single character gairaigo
o 4.6 Other readings
o 4.7 When to use which reading
o 4.8 Pronunciation assistance
o 4.9 Spelling words
o 4.10 Dictionaries

5 Local developments and divergences from Chinese

o 5.1 Kokuji
o 5.2 Kokkun

6 Types of Kanji: by category

o 6.1 Shkei moji ()
o 6.2 Shiji moji ()
o 6.3 Kaii moji ()
o 6.4 Keisei moji ()
o 6.5 Tench moji ()
o 6.6 Kasha moji ()

7 Related symbols

8 Collation

9 Kanji education

10 See also

11 Notes

12 References

13 External links
o 13.1 Glyph conversion

History

Nihon Shoki (720 AD), considered by historians and archaeologists as the most complete extant historical
record of ancient Japan, was written entirely in kanji.
Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative
items imported from China. The earliest known instance of such an import was the King of Na gold seal
given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Yamato emissary in 57 AD.[4] Chinese coins from the 1st century
AD have been found in Yayoi-period archaeological sites.[5] However, the Japanese of that era probably had
no comprehension of the script, and would remain illiterate until the 5th century AD.[5] According to the
Nihon Shoki and Kojiki, a semi-legendary scholar called Wani () was dispatched to Japan by the
Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of Emperor jin in the early 5th century, bringing with him knowledge
of Confucianism and Chinese characters.[6]
The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed
at the Yamato court.[5] For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of
Liu Song in 478 has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were
organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. During the reign of Empress Suiko (593
628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large
increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court.[6]
The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were
written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the Heian period (7941185), however, a system known as
kanbun emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to
restructure and read Chinese sentences, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in
accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar.
Chinese characters also came to be used to write Japanese words, resulting in the modern kana syllabaries.
Around 650 CE, a writing system called man'ygana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'ysh)
evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'ygana
written in cursive style evolved into hiragana, or onna-de, that is, "ladies' hand,"[7] a writing system that was
accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian-era literature by women
were written in hiragana. Katakana emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'ygana
to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to
collectively as kana, are actually descended from kanji.
In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb
stems, while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings and as phonetic complements to
disambiguate readings (okurigana), particles, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji
is considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. Katakana are used for representing onomatopoeia,
non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals
(with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.

Orthographic reform and lists of kanji

Main article: Japanese script reform

A young woman practicing kanji. Ukiyo-e woodblock print by Ysh Chikanobu, 1897
In 1946, following World War II, the Japanese government instituted a series of orthographic reforms. This
was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and
periodicals. The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned
during each grade of school were established. Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called shinjitai
(?). Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially
discouraged.
These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and
commonly used; these are known as hygaiji (?).

Kyiku kanji
Main article: Kyiku kanji
The kyiku kanji (?, lit. "education kanji") are 1,006 characters that Japanese children learn in
elementary school. The number was 881 until 1981. The grade-level breakdown of these kanji is known as
the gakunen-betsu kanji haithy (?), or the gakush kanji.

Jy kanji
Main article: Jy kanji
The jy kanji (?, regular-use kanji) are 2,136 characters consisting of all the Kyiku kanji, plus
1,130 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category
are often given furigana. The jy kanji were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters
known as the ty kanji (?, general-use kanji), introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945
characters, the jy kanji list was extended to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previously
Jinmeiy kanji; some are used to write prefecture names: , , , , , , , , , and .

Jinmeiy kanji
Main article: Jinmeiy kanji

Since September 27, 2004, the jinmeiy kanji (?, kanji for use in personal names) consist of
3,119 characters, containing the jy kanji plus an additional 983 kanji found in people's names. There were
only 92 kanji in the original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes
the term jinmeiy kanji refers to all 3,119, and sometimes it only refers to the 983 that are only used for
names.

Hygaiji
Main article: Hygaiji
Hygaiji (?, "unlisted characters") are any kanji not contained in the jy kanji and jinmeiy kanji
lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, but extended shinjitai forms exist.

Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji

The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana,
as well as other forms of writing such as the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic script, Greek alphabet, Hindu-Arabic
numerals, etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards
are:

JIS X 0208,[8] the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.

JIS X 0212,[9] a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used,
mainly because the common Shift JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively
obsolete;

JIS X 0213,[10] a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,695 additional kanji, of
which 2,743 (all but 952) were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with
Shift JIS encoding;

JIS X 0221:1995, the Japanese version of the ISO 10646/Unicode standard.

Gaiji
Gaiji (?, lit. "external characters") are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding
systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more
conventional glyph in reference works, and can include non-kanji symbols as well.
Gaiji can be either user-defined characters or system-specific characters. Both are a problem for information
interchange, as the codepoint used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one
computer or operating system to another.
Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997, and JIS X 0213-2000 used the range of code-points
previously allocated to gaiji, making them completely unusable. Nevertheless, they persist today with NTT
DoCoMo's "i-mode" service, where they are used for emoji (pictorial characters).
Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas, while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent
Glyphlets)[11][12] technology allows the creation of customized gaiji.
The Text Encoding Initiative uses a <g> element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including
gaiji.[13] (The g stands for "gaiji")[14]

Total number of kanji

There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. The
Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters, but
the Zhonghua Zihai, published in 1994 in China, where Chinese characters are used more extensively,
contains about 85,000 characters.[15][16][17] However, the majority of these are not in common use in any
country, and many are obscure variants or archaic forms.
Approximately 2,000 to 3,000 characters are in common use in Japan, a few thousand more find occasional
use, and a total of about 13,000 characters can be encoded in various Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji.

Readings
Because of the way they have been
Borrowing typology of Han characters
adopted into Japanese, a single kanji
Meaning
Pronunciation
may be used to write one or more
different words or, in some cases,
a) semantic on
L1
L1
morphemes and thus the same
b) semantic kun
L1
L2
character may be pronounced in
c) phonetic on

L1
different ways. From the point of view d) phonetic kun

L2
of the reader, kanji are said to have one *With L1 representing the language borrowed from (Chinese) and L2
or more different "readings". Although representing the borrowing language (Japanese).[18]
more than one reading may become
activated in the brain,[19] deciding which reading is appropriate depends on recognizing which word it
represents, which can usually be determined from context, intended meaning, whether the character occurs
as part of a compound word or an independent word, and sometimes location within the sentence. For
example, is usually read ky, meaning "today", but in formal writing is instead read konnichi, meaning
"nowadays"; this is understood from context. Nevertheless, some cases are ambiguous and require a
furigana gloss, which are also used simply for difficult readings or to specify a non-standard reading.
Kanji readings are categorized as either on'yomi (literally "sound reading", from Chinese) or kun'yomi
(literally "meaning reading", native Japanese), and most characters have at least two readings, at least one of
each. However, some characters have only a single reading, such as kiku (?, "chrysanthemum", a onreading) or iwashi (?, "sardine", a kun-reading); kun-only are common for Japanese-coined kanji (kokuji).
Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is , which is
read as sei, sh, nama, ki, o-u, i-kiru, i-kasu, i-keru, u-mu, u-mareru, ha-eru, and ha-yasu, totaling 8 basic
readings (first 2 are on, rest are kun), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct; see okurigana: for
details.
Most often a character will be used for both sound and meaning, and it is simply a matter of choosing the
correct reading based on which word it represents. In other cases, a character is used only for sound (ateji),
in which case pronunciation is still based on a standard reading, or used only for meaning (broadly a form of
ateji, narrowly jukujikun), in which case the individual character does not have a reading, only the full
compound; this is significantly more complicated; see special readings, below.
The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in Chinese languages, where there are literary
and colloquial readings of Chinese characters borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these
borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese languages
(which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form doublets and are
generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi, reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into
Japanese.

On'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading)

The on'yomi (?, lit. "sound(-based) reading"), the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of
the Japanese approximation of the Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced.
Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi,

and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan would not normally be expected to have on'yomi, but
there are exceptions, such as the character "to work", which has the kun'yomi "hataraku" and the on'yomi
"d", and "gland", which has only the on'yomi "sen" in both cases these come from the on'yomi of the
phonetic component, respectively "d" and "sen".
Generally, on'yomi are classified into four types according to their region and time of origin:

Go-on (?, "Wu sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Southern and Northern
Dynasties of China during the 5th and 6th centuries. There is a high probability of Go referring to the
Wu region (in the vicinity of modern Shanghai), which still maintains linguistic similarities with
modern Sino-Japanese vocabulary.

Kan-on (?, "Han sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Tang Dynasty of China
in the 7th to 9th centuries, primarily from the standard speech of the capital, Chang'an (modern
Xi'an). Here, Kan refers to Han Chinese or China proper.

T-on (?, "Tang sound") readings are from the pronunciations of later dynasties of China, such
as the Song and Ming. They cover all readings adopted from the Heian era to the Edo period. This is
also known as Ts-on (?, Tang and Song sound).

Examples (rare readings in parentheses)

Kanji
Meaning
Go-on
Kan-on
T-on
Kan'y-on
bright
my
mei
(min)

gy
k
go
(an)

g
k
extreme
goku
kyoku

pearl
shu
shu
ju
(zu)

degree
do
(to)

transport
(shu)
(shu)

yu

masculine

bear

child
shi
shi
su

clear
sh
sei
(shin)

capital
ky
kei
(kin)

soldier
hy
hei

strong
g
ky

?
Kan'y-on' ( , "customary sound") readings, which are mistaken or changed readings of the
kanji that have become accepted into Japanese language. In some cases, they are the actual readings
that accompanied the character's introduction to Japan, but do not match how the character should
be read according to the rules of character construction and pronunciation.
The most common form of readings is the kan-on one, and use of a non-kan-on reading in a word where the
kan-on reading is well-known is a common cause of reading mistakes or difficulty, such as in ge-doku (
?, detoxification, anti-poison) (go-on), where is usually instead read as kai. The go-on readings are
especially common in Buddhist terminology such as gokuraku (?, paradise), as well as in some of the
earliest loans, such as the Sino-Japanese numbers. The t-on readings occur in some later words, such as isu
(?, chair), futon (?, mattress), and andon (?, a kind of paper lantern). The go-on, kan-on, and
t-on readings are generally cognate (with rare exceptions of homographs; see below), having a common
origin in Old Chinese, and hence form linguistic doublets or triplets, but they can differ significantly from
each other and from modern Chinese pronunciation.

In Chinese, most characters are associated with a single Chinese sound, though there are distinct literary and
colloquial readings. However, some homographs ( pinyin: duynz) such as (hng or xng)
(Japanese: an, g, gy) have more than one reading in Chinese representing different meanings, which is
reflected in the carryover to Japanese as well. Additionally, many Chinese syllables, especially those with an
entering tone, did not fit the largely consonant-vowel (CV) phonotactics of classical Japanese. Thus most
on'yomi are composed of two morae (beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the
first mora, the vowel i, or one of the syllables ku, ki, tsu, chi, or moraic n, chosen for their approximation to
the final consonants of Middle Chinese. It may be that palatalized consonants before vowels other than i
developed in Japanese as a result of Chinese borrowings, as they are virtually unknown in words of native
Japanese origin.
On'yomi primarily occur in multi-kanji compound words ( jukugo?), many of which are the result of the
adoption, along with the kanji themselves, of Chinese words for concepts that either did not exist in
Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often
compared to the English borrowings from Latin, Greek, and Norman French, since Chinese-borrowed terms
are often more specialized, or considered to sound more erudite or formal, than their native counterparts.
The major exception to this rule is family names, in which the native kun'yomi are usually used (though
on'yomi are found in many personal names, especially men's names).

Kun'yomi (Japanese reading)

The kun'yomi (?, lit. "meaning reading"), the native reading, is a reading based on the pronunciation
of a native Japanese word, or yamato kotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese
character when it was introduced. As with on'yomi, there can be multiple kun'yomi for the same kanji, and
some kanji have no kun'yomi at all.
For instance, the kanji for east, , has the on'yomi t. However, Japanese already had two words for "east":
higashi and azuma. Thus the kanji had the latter readings added as kun'yomi. In contrast, the kanji ,
denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (about 30 mm or 1.2 inch), has no native Japanese equivalent; it
only has an on'yomi, sun, with no native kun'yomi. Most kokuji, Japanese-created Chinese characters, only
have kun'yomi (although some have back-formed a pseudo-on'yomi by analogy with similar characters, such
as d, from d, though some, such as sen "gland", have only an on'yomi.
Kun'yomi are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure of yamato kotoba. Most noun or adjective
kun'yomi are two to three syllables long, while verb kun'yomi are usually between one and three syllables in
length, not counting trailing hiragana called okurigana. Okurigana are not considered to be part of the
internal reading of the character, although they are part of the reading of the word. A beginner in the
language will rarely come across characters with long readings, but readings of three or even four syllables
are not uncommon. This contrasts with on'yomi, which are monosyllabic, and is unusual in the Chinese
family of scripts, which generally use one character per syllable not only in Chinese, but also in Korean,
Vietnamese, and Zhuang; polysyllabic Chinese characters are rare and considered non-standard.
uketamawaru, kokorozashi, and mikotonori have five syllables represented by a single kanji, the
longest readings in the jy character set. These unusually long readings are due a single character
representing a compound word. In detail, due respectively to being a single character for a compound
verb, one component of which has a long reading (alternative spelling as u(ke)-tamawa(ru), hence
(1+1)+3=5; compare common u(ke)-tsu(keru), to being a nominalization of the verb
which has a long reading kokoroza(su) (due to being derived from a noun-verb compound, kokoroza(su)), the nominalization removing the okurigana, hence increasing the reading by one mora, yielding
4+1=5 (compare common hanashi 2+1=3, from hana(su), and being a triple compound
(alternative spelling mi-koto-nori, hence 1+2+2=5). Longer readings exist for non-Jy characters
and non-kanji symbols, where a long gairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed as kun'yomi see
single character gairaigo, below) the character has the seven kana reading
senchimtoru "centimeter", though it is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so
occupying one space); another common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading

 psento. Further, some Jy characters have long non-Jy readings (students learn the
character, but not the reading), such as omonpakaru for .
In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single Japanese word. Typically when this
occurs, the different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word , naosu, when
written , means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written it means "to fix or correct
something". Sometimes the distinction is very clear, although not always. Differences of opinion among
reference works is not uncommon; one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary
may draw distinctions of use. As a result, native speakers of the language may have trouble knowing which
kanji to use and resort to personal preference or by writing the word in hiragana. This latter strategy is
frequently employed with more complex cases such as moto, which has at least five different kanji: ,
, , , and , the first three of which have only very subtle differences. Another notable example is
sakazuki "sake cup", which may be spelt as at least five different kanji: , , /, and ; of these, the
first two are common formally is a small cup and a large cup.
Local dialectical readings of kanji are also classified under kun'yomi, most notably readings for words in
Ryukyuan languages. Further, in rare cases gairaigo (borrowed words) have a single character associated
with them, in which case this reading is formally classified as a kun'yomi, because the character is being
used for meaning, not sound. This is discussed under single character gairaigo, below.

Mixed readings

A jbako (?), which has a mixed on-kun reading.

A yut (?), which has a mixed kun-on reading.

There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi, known as jbako (?,
multi-layered food box) or yut (?, hot liquid pail) words (depending on the order), which are
themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are autological words): the first character of jbako is
read using on'yomi, the second kun'yomi (on-kun). It is the other way around with yut (kun-on).
Formally, these are referred to as jbako-yomi (?, jbako reading) and yut-yomi (?, yut
reading). Note that in both these words, the on'yomi has a long vowel; long vowels in Japanese generally
come from Chinese, hence distinctive of on'yomi. These are the Japanese form of hybrid words. Other

examples include basho (?, "place", kun-on), kin'iro (?, "golden", on-kun) and aikid (?, the
martial art Aikido", kun-on-on).
Ateji often use mixed readings. For instance the city of Sapporo, whose name derives from the Ainu
language and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with the on-kun compound (which includes
sokuon as if it were a purely on compound).

Special readings
Gikun (?) and jukujikun (?) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct
correspondence to the characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi, but rather are connected with their
meaning this is the opposite of ateji.[contradiction] From the point of view of the character, rather than the word,
this is known as a nankun (?, difficult reading), and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry
for the character.
Gikun are when non-standard kanji are used, generally for effect, such as using with reading fuyu
("winter"), rather than the standard character .
Jukujikun are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound. The word is
pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example, ("this morning")
is jukujikun, and read neither as *ima'asa, the kun'yomi of the characters, nor konch, the on'yomi of the
characters, nor any combination thereof. Instead it is read as kesa, a native bisyllabic Japanese word that
may be seen as a single morpheme, or as a fusion of ky (previously kefu), "today", and asa, "morning".
Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, and for some old borrowings, such as
shishamo (?, willow leaf fish), from Ainu; or tabako (?, smoke grass), from Portuguese. Words
whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some
old borrowed words are also written as hiragana.
Jukujikun are quite varied. Often the kanji compound for jukujikun is idiosyncratic and created for the word,
with the corresponding Chinese word not existing; in other cases a kanji compound for an existing Chinese
word is reused, with the Chinese word and on'yomi may or may not be used in Japanese; for example, (
?, reindeer) is jukujikun for tonakai, from Ainu, but the on'yomi reading of junroku is also used. In some
cases Japanese coinages have subsequently been borrowed back into Chinese, such as ank (?,
monkfish).
The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not
have an existing kanji spelling (either kun'yomi or ateji) or for which a new kanji spelling is produced. Most
often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a
verb form or a fusional pronunciation; for example sum (?, sumo) is originally from the verb suma-u
(?, to vie), while ky (?, today) is fusional. In rare cases jukujikun is also applied to inflectional
words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word.
Examples of jukujikun for inflectional words follow. The most common example of a jukujikun adjective is
kawai-i (?, cute), originally kawayu-i; the word (?) is used in Chinese, but the corresponding
on'yomi is not used in Japanese. By contrast, "appropriate" can be either fusawa-shii (?, in
jukujikun) or s (?, in on'yomi) are both used; the -shii ending is because these were formerly a
different class of adjectives. A common example of a verb with jukujikun is haya-ru (?, to spread, to
be in vogue), corresponding to on'yomi ryk (?). A sample jukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a
verb form) is yusuri (?, extortion), from yusu-ru (?, to extort), spelling from kysei (?,
extortion). See and for many more examples. Note that there are also compound verbs and,
less commonly, compound adjectives, and while these may have multiple kanji without intervening
characters, they are read using usual kun'yomi; examples include omo-shiro-i (?, interesting) facewhitening and zuru-gashiko-i (?, sly).

Typographically, the furigana for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or
for inflectional words over the entire root corresponding to the reading being related to the entire word
rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the
usual phono-semantic readings.
Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of ateji, though in narrow usage "ateji" refers
specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), rather than meaning and not
sound (meaning-spelling), as in jukujikun.
Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began life as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings).
Occasionally a single word will have many such kanji spellings; an extreme example is hototogisu (lesser
cuckoo), which may be spelt in a great many ways, including , , , , , ,
, , , , and many of these variant spellings are particular to haiku poems.

Single character gairaigo

In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a reading that is borrowed from a modern foreign language
(gairaigo), though most often these words are written in katakana. Notable examples include pji (
?, page), botan (?, button), zero (?, zero), and mtoru (?, meter).
See list of single character gairaigo for more. These are classed as kun'yomi of a single character, because
the character is being used for meaning only (without the Chinese pronunciation), rather than as ateji, which
is the classification used when a gairaigo term is written as a compound (2 or more characters). However,
unlike the vast majority of other kun'yomi, these readings are not native Japanese, but rather borrowed, so
the "kun'yomi" label can be misleading. The readings are also written in katakana, unlike the usual hiragana
for native kun'yomi. Note that most of these characters are for units, particularly SI units, in many cases
using new characters (kokuji) coined during the Meiji period, such as kiromtoru (?,
kilometer, "meter" + "thousand").

Other readings
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called nanori (), which are mostly used for names (often
given names) and in general, are closely related to the kun'yomi. Place names sometimes also use nanori or,
occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere.
In example, there is the surname (literally, "little birds at play") that implies there are no predators,
such as hawks, present. Pronounced, "kotori asobu". The name then can also mean (taka ga
inai, literally, "no hawks around") and it can be shortened to be pronounced as Takanashi.[20]

When to use which reading

Although there are general rules for when to use on'yomi and when to use kun'yomi, the language is littered
with exceptions, and it is not always possible for even a native speaker to know how to read a character
without prior knowledge (this is especially true for names, both of people and places); further, a given
character may have multiple kun'yomi or on'yomi. When reading Japanese, one primarily recognizes words
(multiple characters and okurigana) and their readings, rather than individual characters, and only guess
readings of characters when trying to "sound out" an unrecognized word.
Homographs exist, however, which can sometimes be deduced from context, and sometimes cannot,
requiring a glossary. For example, may be read either as ky "today (informal)" (special fused reading
for native word) or as konnichi "these days (formal)" (on'yomi); in formal writing this will generally be read
as konnichi. In some cases multiple readings are common, as in "pork soup", which is commonly
pronounced both as ton-jiru (mixed on-kun) and buta-jiru (kun-kun), with ton somewhat more common
nationally. Inconsistencies abound for example gyu-niku "beef" and y-niku "mutton" have onon readings, but buta-niku "pork" and tori-niku "poultry" have kun-on readings.

The main guideline is that a single kanji followed by okurigana (hiragana characters that are part of the
word) as used in native verbs and adjectives always indicates kun'yomi, while kanji compounds (kango)
usually use on'yomi, which is usually kan-on; however, other on'yomi are also common, and kun'yomi are
also commonly used in kango. For a kanji in isolation without okurigana, it is typically read using their
kun'yomi, though there are numerous exceptions. For example, "iron" is usually read with the on'yomi
tetsu rather than the kun'yomi kurogane. Chinese on'yomi which are not the common kan-on one are a
frequent cause of difficulty or mistakes when encountering unfamiliar words or for inexperienced readers,
though skilled natives will recognize the word; a good example is ge-doku (?, detoxification, antipoison) (go-on), where (?) is usually instead read as kai.
Okurigana are used with kun'yomi to mark the inflected ending of a native verb or adjective, or by
convention note that Japanese verbs and adjectives are closed class, and do not generally admit new words
(borrowed Chinese vocabulary, which are nouns, can form verbs by adding -suru (?, to do) at the end,
and adjectives via -no or -na, but cannot become native Japanese vocabulary, which inflect). For
example: aka-i "red", atara-shii "new", mi-ru "(to) see". Okurigana can be used to
indicate which kun'yomi to use, as in ta-beru versus ku-u (casual), both meaning "(to) eat", but
this is not always sufficient, as in , which may be read as a-ku or hira-ku, both meaning "(to) open".
is a particularly complicated example, with multiple kun and on'yomi see okurigana: for details.
Okurigana is also used for some nouns and adverbs, as in nasake "sympathy", kanarazu
"invariably", but not for kane "money", for instance. Okurigana is an important aspect of kanji usage in
Japanese; see that article for more information on kun'yomi orthography
Kanji occurring in compounds (multi-kanji words) ( jukugo?) are generally read using on'yomi,
especially for four-character compounds (yojijukugo). Though again, exceptions abound, for example,
jh "information", gakk "school", and shinkansen "bullet train" all follow this pattern. This
isolated kanji versus compound distinction gives words for similar concepts completely different
pronunciations. "east" and "north" use the kun'yomi higashi and kita, being stand-alone characters,
while "northeast", as a compound, uses the on'yomi hokut. This is further complicated by the fact that
many kanji have more than one on'yomi: is read as sei in sensei "teacher" but as sh in issh
"one's whole life". Meaning can also be an important indicator of reading; is read i when it means
"simple", but as eki when it means "divination", both being on'yomi for this character.
These rules of thumb have many exceptions. Kun'yomi compound words are not as numerous as those with
on'yomi, but neither are they rare. Examples include tegami "letter", higasa "parasol", and the
famous kamikaze "divine wind". Such compounds may also have okurigana, such as (also
written ) karaage "Chinese-style fried chicken" and origami, although many of these can
also be written with the okurigana omitted (for example, or ).
Similarly, some on'yomi characters can also be used as words in isolation: ai "love", Zen, ten
"mark, dot". Most of these cases involve kanji that have no kun'yomi, so there can be no confusion, although
exceptions do occur. A lone may be read as kin "gold" or as kane "money, metal"; only context can
determine the writer's intended reading and meaning.
Multiple readings have given rise to a number of homographs, in some cases having different meanings
depending on how they are read. One example is , which can be read in three different ways: jzu
(skilled), uwate (upper part), or kamite (stage left/house right). In addition, has the reading umai
(skilled). More subtly, has three different readings, all meaning "tomorrow": ashita (casual), asu
(polite), and mynichi (formal). Furigana (reading glosses) is often used to clarify any potential ambiguities.
Conversely, in some cases homophonous terms may be distinguished in writing by different characters, but
not so distinguished in speech, and hence potentially confusing. In some cases when it is important to
distinguish these in speech, the reading of a relevant character may be changed. For example,
(privately established, esp. school) and (city established) are both normally pronounced shi-ritsu; in
speech these may be distinguished by the alternative pronunciations watakushi-ritsu and ichi-ritsu. More
informally, in legal jargon "preamble" and "full text" are both pronounced zen-bun, so may

be pronounced mae-bun for clarity, as in "Have you memorized the preamble [not 'whole text'] of the
constitution?". As in these examples, this is primarily using a kun'yomi for one character in a normally
on'yomi term.
As stated above, jbako and yut readings are also not uncommon. Indeed, all four combinations of reading
are possible: on-on, kun-kun, kun-on and on-kun.
Some famous place names, including those of Japan itself ( Nihon or sometimes Nippon) and that of
Tokyo ( Tky) are read with on'yomi; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read with
kun'yomi: saka, Aomori, Hakone. Names often use characters and readings that are not in
common use outside of names. When characters are used as abbreviations of place names, their reading may
not match that in the original. The Osaka () and Kobe () baseball team, the Hanshin () Tigers,
take their name from the on'yomi of the second kanji of saka and the first of Kbe. The name of the Keisei
() railway line linking Tokyo () and Narita () is formed similarly, although the reading of
from is kei, despite ky already being an on'yomi in the word Tky.
Japanese family names are also usually read with kun'yomi: Yamada, Tanaka, Suzuki.
Japanese given names often have very irregular readings. Although they are not typically considered jbako
or yut, they often contain mixtures of kun'yomi, on'yomi and nanori, such as Daisuke [on-kun],
Natsumi [kun-on]. Being chosen at the discretion of the parents, the readings of given names do not follow
any set rules, and it is impossible to know with certainty how to read a person's name without independent
verification. Parents can be quite creative, and rumours abound of children called su ("Earth") and
Enjeru ("Angel"); neither are common names, and have normal readings chiky and tenshi respectively.
Common patterns do exist, however, allowing experienced readers to make a good guess for most names.
Chinese place names and Chinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost
invariably read with on'yomi. Especially for older and well-known names, the resulting Japanese
pronunciation may differ widely from that used by modern Chinese speakers. For example, Mao Zedong's
name is pronounced as M Takut (?) in Japanese. Today, Chinese names that aren't well known in
Japan are often spelled in katakana instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese
pronunciation. Alternatively, they may be written in kanji with katakana furigana.
In some cases the same kanji can appear in a given word with different readings. Normally this occurs when
a character is duplicated and the reading of the second character has voicing (rendaku), as in hito-bito
"people" (more often written with the iteration mark as ), but in rare cases the readings can be
unrelated, as in tobi-haneru (?, "hop around", more often written ).

Pronunciation assistance
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled
out in ruby characters known as furigana, (small kana written above or to the right of the character) or
kumimoji (small kana written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or
foreign learners. It is also used in newspapers and manga (comics) for rare or unusual readings and for
characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji. Works of fiction sometimes use
furigana to create new "words" by giving normal kanji non-standard readings, or to attach a foreign word
rendered in katakana as the reading for a kanji or kanji compound of the same or similar meaning.

Spelling words
Conversely, specifying a given kanji, or spelling out a kanji wordwhether the pronunciation is known or
notcan be complicated, due to the fact that there is not a commonly used standard way to refer to
individual kanji (one does not refer to "kanji #237"), and that a given reading does not map to a single kanji
indeed there are many homophonous words, not simply individual characters, particularly for kango (with
on'yomi). Easiest is to write the word outeither on paper or tracing it in the airor look it up (given the
pronunciation) in a dictionary, particularly an electronic dictionary; when this is not possible, such as when

speaking over the phone or writing implements are not available (and tracing in air is too complicated),
various techniques can be used. These include giving kun'yomi for charactersthese are often unique
using a well-known word with the same character (and preferably the same pronunciation and meaning), and
describing the character via its components. For example, one may explain how to spell the word kshinry
(?, spice) via the words kao-ri (?, fragrance), kara-i (?, spicy), and in-ry (?, beverage)
the first two use the kun'yomi, the third is a well-known compoundsaying "kaori, karai, ry as in
inry."

Dictionaries
In dictionaries, both words and individual characters have readings glossed, via various conventions. Native
words and Sino-Japanese vocabulary are glossed in hiragana (for both kun and on readings), while
borrowings (gairaigo) including modern borrowings from Chinese are glossed in katakana; this is the
standard writing convention also used in furigana. By contrast, readings for individual characters are
conventionally written in katakana for on readings, and hiragana for kun readings. Kun readings may further
have a separator to indicate which characters are okurigana, and which are considered readings of the
character itself. For example, in the entry for , the reading corresponding to the basic verb eat (
taberu?) may be written as . (ta.beru), to indicate that ta is the reading of the character itself. Further,
kanji dictionaries often list compounds including irregular readings of a kanji.

Local developments and divergences from Chinese

Since Kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, the majority of kanji used in modern
Japanese still retain their Chinese meaning, physical resemblance with some of their modern traditional
Chinese characters counterparts, and a degree of similarity with Classical Chinese pronunciation imported to
Japan from 5th to 9th century. Nevertheless, after centuries of development, there is a notable number of
kanji used in modern Japanese which have different meaning from Chinese characters used in modern
Chinese. Such differences are the result of:

the use of characters created in Japan,

characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and

post-World War II simplifications (shinjitai) of the kanji.

Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has the result that
Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.

Kokuji
See also: Gukja and Chinese family of scripts Adaptations for other languages
Kokuji (?, "national characters") are characters particular to Japan, generally devised in Japan. These
"kanji made in Japan" ( Wasei kanji?) are primarily formed in the usual way of Chinese characters,
namely by combining existing components, though using a combination that is not used in China. The
corresponding phenomenon in Korea is called gukja (), a cognate name; there are however far fewer
Korean-coined characters than Japanese-coined ones. Other languages using the Chinese family of scripts
sometimes have far more extensive systems of native characters, most significantly Vietnamese ch nm,
which comprises over 20,000 characters used throughout traditional Vietnamese writing, and Zhuang
sawndip, which comprises over 10,000 characters, which are still in use.
Since kokuji are generally devised for existing native words, these usually only have native kun readings.
However, they occasionally have a Chinese on reading, derived from a phonetic, as in , d, from , and

in rare cases only have an on reading, as in , sen, from , which was derived for use in technical
compounds ( means "gland", hence used in medical terminology).
The majority of kokuji are ideogrammatic compounds (), meaning that they are composed of two (or
more) characters, with the meaning associated with the combination. For example, is composed of
(person radical) plus (action), hence "action of a person, work". This is in contrast to kanji generally,
which are overwhelmingly phono-semantic compounds. This difference is because kokuji were coined to
express Japanese words, so borrowing existing (Chinese) readings could not express these combining
existing characters to logically express the meaning was the simplest way to achieve this. Other illustrative
examples (below) include sakaki tree, formed as "tree" and "god", literally "divine tree", and
tsuji "crossroads, street" formed as () "road" and "cross", hence "cross-road".
In terms of meanings, these are especially for natural phenomena (esp. species) that were not present in
ancient China, including a very large number of fish, such as (sardine). In other cases they refer to
specifically Japanese abstract concepts, everyday words (like ), or later technical coinages (such as ).
There are hundreds of kokuji in existence.[21] Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly
used components of the written Japanese language. These include the following:
Jy kanji has about 9 kokuji; there is some dispute over classification, but generally includes these:

d, () hatara(ku) "work", the most commonly used kokuji, used in the

fundamental verb hatara(ku) (?, "work"), included in elementary texts and on the Proficiency
Test N5.

() ko(mu), used in the fundamental verb komu (?, "to be crowded")

() nio(u), used in common verb niou (?, "to smell, to be fragrant")

hatake "field of crops"

sen, "gland"

tge "mountain pass"

waku, "frame"

hei, "wall"

() shibo(ru), "to squeeze" (disputed; see below); a

jinmeiy kanji

sakaki "tree, genus Cleyera"

tsuji "crossroads, street"

monme (unit of weight)

Hygaiji:

() shitsu(ke) "training, rearing (an animal, a child)"

Some of these characters (for example, , "gland")[22] have been introduced to China. In some cases the
Chinese reading is the inferred Chinese reading, interpreting the character as a phono-semantic compound
(as in how on readings are sometimes assigned to these characters in Chinese), while in other cases (such as
), the Japanese on reading is borrowed (in general this differs from the modern Chinese pronunciation of
this phonetic). Similar coinages occurred to a more limited extent in Korea and Vietnam.
Historically, some kokuji date back to very early Japanese writing, being found in the Man'ysh, for
example iwashi "sardine" dates to the Nara period (8th century) while they have continued to be
created as late as the late 19th century, when a number of characters were coined in the Meiji era for new
scientific concepts. For example, some characters were produced as regular compounds for some (but not
all) SI units, such as ( "meter" + "thousand, kilo-") for kilometer see Chinese characters for SI
units for details.
In Japan the kokuji category is strictly defined as characters whose earliest appearance is in Japan. If a
character appears earlier in the Chinese literature, it is not considered a kokuji even if the character was
independently coined in Japan and unrelated to the Chinese character (meaning "not borrowed from
Chinese"). In other words, kokuji are not simply characters that were made in Japan, but characters that were
first made in Japan. An illustrative example is ank (?, monkfish). This spelling was created in Edo
period Japan from the ateji (phonetic kanji spelling) for the existing word ank by adding the
radical to each character the characters were "made in Japan". However, is not considered kokuji, as it
is found in ancient Chinese texts as a corruption of (). is considered kokuji, as it has not been
found in any earlier Chinese text. Casual listings may be more inclusive, including characters such as .[23]
Another example is , which is sometimes not considered kokuji due to its earlier presence as a corruption
of Chinese .

Kokkun
In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original
Chinese meanings. These are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun () and include
characters such as:
Char.

Japanese
Reading
Meaning
fuji
wisteria
oki
offing, offshore
tsubaki
Camellia japonica
ayu
sweetfish

Chinese
Pinyin
Meaning
tng
rattan, cane, vine
chng rinse, minor river (Cantonese)
chn
Toona spp.
nin
catfish (rare, usually written )

Types of Kanji: by category

Main article: Chinese character classification
Han-dynasty scholar Xu Shen in his 2nd-century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi classified Chinese characters into
six categories (Chinese: lish, Japanese: rikusho). The traditional classification is still taught but is
problematic and no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice, as some categories are not clearly
defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two
refer to usage.

Shkei moji ()
Shkei (Mandarin: xingxng) characters are pictographic sketches of the object they represent. For example,
is an eye, while is a tree. (Shkei is also the Japanese word for Egyptian hieroglyphs). The
current forms of the characters are very different from the originals, though their representations are more

clear in oracle bone script and seal script. These pictographic characters make up only a small fraction of
modern characters.

Shiji moji ()
Shiji (Mandarin: zhsh) characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives"
to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple
graphically and represent an abstract concept such as "up" or "above" and "down" or "below". These
make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Kaii moji ()
Kaii (Mandarin: huy) characters are compound ideographs, often called "compound indicatives",
"associative compounds", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine
semantically to present an overall meaning. An example of this type is (rest) from (person radical) and
(tree). Another is the kokuji (mountain pass) made from (mountain), (up) and (down). These
make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Keisei moji ()
Keisei (Mandarin: xngshng) characters are phono-semantic or radical-phonetic compounds, sometimes
called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic", or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest
category, making up about 90% of the characters in the standard lists; however, some of the most frequently
used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above, so keisei moji will usually make up less than
90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which (most
commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general category of the meaning or
semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element) approximates the
pronunciation. The pronunciation relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable
in the modern Japanese on'yomi of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all to kun'yomi. The same is true
of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to
Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic
compound, typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.

Tench moji ()
Tench (Mandarin: zhunzh) characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative
cognates", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most
problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or
application has become extended. For example, is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different
pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two different on'yomi, gaku 'music' and raku 'pleasure'.

Kasha moji ()
Kasha (Mandarin: jiji) are rebuses, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters
follows one of the patterns above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character
was appropriated to represent a similar sounding word. For example, in ancient Chinese was originally a
pictograph for "wheat". Its syllable was homophonous with the verb meaning "to come", and the character is
used for that verb as a result, without any embellishing "meaning" element attached. The character for wheat
, originally meant "to come", being a keisei moji having 'foot' at the bottom for its meaning part and
"wheat" at the top for sound. The two characters swapped meaning, so today the more common word has the
simpler character. This borrowing of sounds has a very long history.

Related symbols

See also: Japanese typographic symbols

The iteration mark () is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to
a ditto mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example iroiro
(?, "various") and tokidoki (?, "sometimes"). This mark also appears in personal and place names,
as in the surname Sasaki (). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji , a variant of d (?,
"same").
Another abbreviated symbol is , in appearance a small katakana "ke", but actually a simplified version of
the kanji , a general counter. It is pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity (such as ,
rokkagetsu "six months") or "ga" in place names like Kasumigaseki (?).

Collation
Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the Latin script, are
often collated using the traditional Chinese radical-and-stroke sorting method. In this system, common
components of characters are identified; these are called radicals. Characters are grouped by their primary
radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character , meaning
"cherry", is sorted as a ten-stroke character under the four-stroke primary radical meaning "tree". When
there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation.
Other kanji sorting methods, such as the SKIP system, have been devised by various authors.
Modern general-purpose Japanese dictionaries (as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally
collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to their kana representations (reflecting the
way they are pronounced). The gojon ordering of kana is normally used for this purpose.

Kanji education

An image that lists most joyo-kanji, according to Halpern's KLD indexing system, with kyo-iku kanji colorcoded by grade level.
Japanese school children are expected to learn 1,006 basic kanji characters, the kyiku kanji, before finishing
the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. The kyiku kanji list is a subset of a
larger list, originally of 1,945 kanji characters, in 2010 extended to 2,136, known as the jy kanji
characters required for the level of fluency necessary to read newspapers and literature in Japanese. This
larger list of characters is to be mastered by the end of the ninth grade.[24] Schoolchildren learn the characters
by repetition and radical.
Students studying Japanese as a foreign language are often required by a curriculum to acquire kanji without
having first learned the vocabulary associated with them. Strategies for these learners vary from copyingbased methods to mnemonic-based methods such as those used in James Heisig's series Remembering the
Kanji. Other textbooks use methods based on the etymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's

The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji and Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters.
Pictorial mnemonics, as in the text Kanji Pict-o-graphix, are also seen.
The Japanese government provides the Kanji kentei ( Nihon kanji nryoku kentei
shiken; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude"), which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level
of the Kanji kentei tests about 6,000 kanji.

See also

Japanese writing system

List of kanji by concept

List of kanji by stroke count

Braille kanji

Han unification

Han-Nom (Vietnamese equivalent)

Hanja (Korean equivalent)

Japanese script reform

Japanese typefaces (shotai)

Kanji of the year

POP (Point of Purchase typeface)

Radical (Chinese character)

Stroke order

Table of kanji radicals

Notes
1.

^ Taylor, Insup; Taylor, Maurice Martin (1995). Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean, and
Japanese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 305. ISBN 90-272-1794-7.

2.

^ Suski, P.M. (2011). The Phonetics of Japanese Language: With Reference to Japanese
Script. p. 1. ISBN 9780203841808.

3.

^ Malatesha Joshi, R.; Aaron, P.G. (2006). Handbook of orthography and literacy. New
Jersey: Routledge. pp. 4812. ISBN 0-8058-4652-2.

4.

^ "Gold Seal (Kin-in)". Fukuoka City Museum. Retrieved September 1, 2014.

5.

^ a b c Miyake (2003), 8.

^ a b Miyake (2003), 9.

6.
7.

^ Hadamitzky, Wolfgang and Spahn, Mark (2012), Kanji and Kana: A Complete Guide to the
Japanese Writing System, Third Edition, Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 4805311169. p. 14.

8.

^ JIS X 0208:1997.

9.

^ JIS X 0212:1990.

10.

^ JIS X 0213:2000.

11.

^ Introducing the SING Gaiji architecture, Adobe.

12.

^ OpenType Technology Center, Adobe.

13.

^ "Representation of Non-standard Characters and Glyphs", P5: Guidelines for Electronic

Text Encoding and Interchange, TEI-C.

14.

^ "TEI element g (character or glyph)", P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and
Interchange, TEI-C.

15.

^ Kuang-Hui Chiu, Chi-Ching Hsu (2006). Chinese Dilemma: How Many Ideographs are
Needed, National Taipei University

16.

^ Shouhui Zhao, Dongbo Zhang, The Totality of Chinese Characters A Digital Perspective

17.

^ Daniel G. Peebles, SCML: A Structural Representation for Chinese Characters, May 29,
2007

18.

^ Rogers, Henry (2005). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN
0631234640

19.

^ Verdonschot, R. G.; La Heij, W.; Tamaoka, K.; Kiyama, S.; You, W. P.; Schiller, N. O.
(2013). "The multiple pronunciations of Japanese kanji: A masked priming investigation". The
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 66 (10): 2023. doi:10.1080/17470218.2013.773050.
PMID 23510000. edit

20.

21.

^ "Kokuji list", SLJ FAQ.

22.

^ Buck, James H. (October 15, 1969) "Some Observations on kokuji" in The JournalNewsletter of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 459.

23.

^ at demonstrates this, listing both and as kokuji, but starring

and stating that dictionaries do not consider it to be a kokuji.

24.

^ Halpern, J. (2006) The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary. ISBN 1568364075. p. 38a.

References

DeFrancis, John (1990). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6.

Hadamitzky, W., and Spahn, M., (1981) Kanji and Kana, Boston: Tuttle.

Hannas, William. C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
ISBN 0-8248-1892-X (paperback); ISBN 0-8248-1842-3 (hardcover).

Kaiser, Stephen (1991). Introduction to the Japanese Writing System. In Kodansha's Compact Kanji
Guide. Tokyo: Kondansha International. ISBN 4-7700-1553-4.

Miyake, Marc Hideo (2003). Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. New York, London:
RoutledgeCurzon.

Morohashi, Tetsuji. Dai Kan-Wa Jiten (Comprehensive ChineseJapanese Dictionary)

19841986. Tokyo: Taishukan

Mitamura, Joyce Yumi and Mitamura, Yasuko Kosaka (1997). Let's Learn Kanji. Tokyo: Kondansha
International. ISBN 4-7700-2068-6.

Unger, J. Marshall (1996). Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the
Lines. ISBN 0-19-510166-9

External links
The Wikibook Japanese has a page on the topic of: Kanji
Look up kanji in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kanji.

Kanji-Trainer Free flashcard learning tool with mnemonic phrases for each character

JLearn Find Kanji by radical, readings or meanings and see how to draw it. Common words that
contain it are also shown

Learning Kanji, an animated application for the 1st Grade Kanji.

Kanji Dictionary online Free Kanji Dictionary

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC server used to find Kanji from English or romanized Japanese

RomajiDesu Kanji Dictionary a comprehensive Kanji dictionary with strokes order and various
lookup methods.

Kanji Explorer More than 13000 Kanji

KanjiQ Kanji flashcard tool that runs on mobile phones.

JISHOP Japanese-English computer kanji dictionary

KanjiLearn Electronic set of 2135 two-sided kanji flashcards, as easy to use as paper flashcards.

Convert Kanji to Romaji, HiraganaConverts Kanji and websites to forms that are easy to read and
gives a word by word translation

TangorinFind kanji fast by selecting their elements

Dictionary of Kokuji in Japanese

Learn Japanese KanjiHow to write Kanji in Japanese

Drill the kanjionline Java tool (Asahi-net)

Kanji AliveOnline kanji learning tool in wide use at many universities, colleges and high-schools.

Real KanjiPractice kanji using different typefaces.

Change in Script Usage in Japanese: A Longitudinal Study of Japanese Government White Papers on
Labor, discussion paper by Takako Tomoda in the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese
Studies, August 19, 2005.

Kanji Dictionary, a kanji dictionary with a focus on compound-exploring.

Genetic Kanji, etymologically organized lists for learning kanji.

Kanji Networks, a kanji etymology dictionary

Japanese Kanji DictionaryEach character is presented by a grade, stroke count, stroke order,
phonetic reading and native Japanese reading. You can also listen to the pronunciation.

WWWJDIC Text TranslatorTakes Japanese text and returns each word with pronunciation
(hiragana) and a translation in English.

JavaDiKt Open source kanji dictionary for desktop

Daoulagad Han Mobile OCR kanji dictionary, OCR interface to the UniHan database

Denshi Jisho Online Japanese dictionary

GSF Jouyou Kanji organized list of kanji which takes into account both grade, stroke count and
frequency

Glyph conversion

A simple Shinjitai Kyjitai converter

A practical Shinjitai Kyjitai Simplified Chinese character converter

A complex Shinjitai Kyjitai converter

A downloadable Shinjitai Kyjitai Simplified Chinese character converter

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5
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6
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127

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130

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132

133

134

7
strokes

135

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158

8
strokes

9
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159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

10
strokes

11
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12
strokes

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

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195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

13
strokes

14
strokes

15
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16
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17
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205

206

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211

212

213

214

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