こんにちは！ I’m Kenta. I know many people who sees kanji for the first time get intimidated by its unfamiliar structure compared to the latin alphabet, but you never have to learn alone. We’ll discover their radicals, practise their readings, and build your confidence one character at a time.
This website is made specifically to help you learn to read Japanese, but reading is only one part of the language. To become fluent, combine what you learn here with regular speaking and listening practice. When practising writing, use pen and paper so you can develop the muscle memory needed to form each character by hand.
Try joining online communities for Japanese learners, and look for Japanese speakers online or in your local area who you can practise with. Using the language with other people will help bring everything you learn here to life.
Before Chinese characters arrived in Japan, only simple pictograms have been found on ancient artifacts from the early Yayoi period(300BCE-300CE). When rice cultivation started to become prevelant in Japan a shift was made from hunter and gatherer into an agricultural society.
Through extensive trade with China, many new ideas and inventions were passed on to Japan. The Japanese were eager to adopt the writing system but made modifications to suit own their spoken language.
During the early Heian period(794-1185), a phonetic cursive handwriting called grass kana were used to easier memorize the Chinese characters since the characters only convey meaning and not how it is supposed to be said. This form of writing evolved into hiragana.
Hiragana become known as 女手(woman's hand) or woman's writing because women had been discouraged or barred from learning kanji. Japan's arguably most famous book 源氏物語(The tale of Genji) by 紫式部(Murasaki Shikibu) is written almost entirely in hiragana.
Katakana's symbols are made from kanji but have taken on a more angular shape and is like hiragana phonetic. Katakana means part of kanji and were developed by Buddhist monks to show correct pronunciation of Chinese texts. It is now used in modern Japanese as a way to show foreign or technical words in a sentence. There were also many people from the Meiji period until world war 2 whos names were written in katakana, particularly women in lower class families. Many Japanese people also had nicknames in katakana so dont be suprised if you read a historic text were a native Japanese have a katakana name.
Today kanji, hiragana, and katakana work together to form the Japanese writing system. Kanji is used to convey the central meaning and hiragana to help with grammar and also formany native Japanese words. Katakana is now used for mainly foreign words, technicals terms and names of foreign born Japanese citizens.
before 1900 there was about 7000 kanji that were in "normal use". In 1923 the first step to limit the number of kanjis were made. The ministry of education formed a list of 1134 kanji that all Japanese should be able to understand and write with an addition of 1320 kanji that everyone should understand but not necessarily be able to write. After the war another restructuring occurred in 1946 and a new list comprised of 1850 characters was made which were to be the standard taught in schools. In 1981 it was revised to 1945 characters. Then in 2010 it was revised again and now consists of 2136 characters which are all included on this site.
Here are three different standards.
Yes. Three useful ways to organise kanji study are the official Jōyō list, the proficiency levels associated with the JLPT, and the graded progression used by the Kanji Kentei.
The Jōyō list contains 2,136 characters designated by the Japanese government for common use. Japanese schools teach them gradually across primary and secondary education.
The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test has five levels, from beginner N5 to advanced N1. Because the test does not publish official kanji lists, these groups are widely used community estimates.
Kanji Kentei has 12 grades, progressing from 80 beginner kanji at Grade 10 to roughly 6,000 at Grade 1. Kenta follows these proficiency ranges as an independent practice aid, not an official exam.
A radical is a recognisable component inside a kanji. It can suggest part of the character’s meaning or provide a useful visual clue. If you recognise a shape but do not know the complete kanji, select it—or combine several radicals—to narrow the library to matching characters.
Radical finder
Kanji library
Jōyō kanji are the 2,136 characters designated for common use in Japanese public life and taught across Japanese primary and secondary school.
Search every word in the local database by spelling, kana reading, rōmaji, English meaning, or radical.
Dictionary radical finder
Complete local word database
Length filters count the kanji in a spelling; kana and okurigana do not add to that count.
Practice dojo
Kenta remembers your progress, reviews difficult kanji with you, and helps you work toward your next belt.
Kenta's belt dojo
1 · Choose a curriculum
Jōyō means everyday-use kanji: this course follows the kanji taught across Japanese primary and secondary school, arranged here as school Grades 1–9.
Independent practice aid: elementary levels follow Japanese school-grade coverage and Grade 2 covers all Jōyō kanji. Upper pools use frequency-ranked approximations to the published proficiency totals; this is not an official 漢検 exam simulator or affiliated with the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation.
2 · Choose a challenge
3 · Choose your round length
Study before the quiz
Select a kanji to open its readings, meanings, radicals, and example words.
Knockout rankings
Start an “All kanji” knockout quiz to enter this local leaderboard.
Round complete
JLPT grammar practice
Read each sentence and choose the particle or verb form that sounds natural.
1 · Choose a study track
2 · Choose a level
3 · Choose an exercise
4 · Choose the number of questions
5 · Begin your grammar test
10 questions covering essential particles in context.
JLPT groupings are approximate study aids because the test does not publish an official grammar-item list. Choose one answer for each blank to see a short explanation.
Which particle completes the sentence?
Test complete
Active recall
No answer choices and no guessing. Type every meaning or reading yourself, then let Kenta check it.
1 · Choose your material
2 · Choose your answer language
3 · Choose what you will write
4 · Choose your round length
Writing round complete
Brush practice
Trace the faint guide or hide it and draw from memory. Kenta keeps count while you practice.
day · sun
Follow the growing radicals
Search all 6,359 kanji, then follow characters that contain the selected form as a component. Explore direct branches in manageable groups, including advanced kanji.
A component map, not an origin story: the tree recognizes both directly listed components and larger shapes reconstructed from the same smaller radicals. For example, it can connect 共 (together) to 供 (submit/offer), even when the source data lists 共 only through its inner shapes.
Words from this branch
Real dictionary examples show how the selected kanji behaves inside words.
Kenta's Kanji Corner
This is where Kenta collects the details he finds most interesting and useful: kana references, practical ways to organise Japanese titles, and frequently used kanji worth recognising.
Hiragana is common for grammar and native words; katakana is common for loanwords, emphasis, and many names. Each pair below represents the same sound.
Japanese books are alphabetised by the recorded pronunciation of their titles in the gojūon sequence—not by the shape, stroke count, or Unicode position of their kanji. Write a kana sorting form for every book title before comparing them.
Copy the title's furigana, publisher reading, or catalogue reading. Convert a kanji title such as 雨 to あめ. A kanji has several possible readings, so its printed shape alone cannot determine its place.
For comparison, treat katakana as its hiragana equivalent: カ → か and ゲ → げ. Ignore spaces and ordinary punctuation unless your bookshelf needs a special house rule.
Start with the first kana. If two titles match, compare their second kana, then their third, continuing until they differ. A shorter reading comes first when every sound up to its end is identical.
あ い う え お
か き く け こ
さ し す せ そ
た ち つ て と
な に ぬ ね の
は ひ ふ へ ほ
ま み む め も
や ゆ よ
ら り る れ ろ
わ を ん
Enter hiragana or katakana readings separated by commas.
This list shows the 5000 most common kanjis.