How to learn kanji

Kanji are the Chinese characters used in Japanese, and they are the part of the language that takes longest. The work is large but not mysterious: a fixed official list, a limited set of recurring components, and a handful of proven methods that differ mainly in the order in which they serve the same meal.

This page explains how kanji work, compares the main methods fairly, and helps you pick one. It assumes you can already read hiragana and katakana. If you cannot, do that first; it takes a week or two.

How many kanji do I need to know?

The official benchmark is the jōyō kanji list (常用漢字, jōyō kanji, "kanji for regular use"). The current version, announced by the Japanese cabinet in 2010, contains 2,136 characters with 4,388 official readings. Newspapers, official documents and most publishing keep to it, and add small kana readings (furigana) to anything outside it.

Group	Number	What it is
Kyōiku kanji (教育漢字)	1,026	The part of the jōyō list taught in the six years of Japanese primary school
Jōyō kanji (常用漢字)	2,136	The full list for general use, covered by the end of compulsory schooling
Jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字)	863	Extra characters permitted in given names

You do not need all 2,136 before you can read anything. Kanji frequency is very uneven: the first several hundred do most of the work in everyday text, and the last few hundred on the list appear rarely. A learner with 1,000 well-known kanji and good vocabulary reads more than one with 2,136 half-known ones.

The JLPT has published no official kanji lists since its 2010 reform. The figures you see online, roughly 100 for N5 rising to about 2,000 for N1, are estimates based on past exams.

What is the difference between on'yomi and kun'yomi?

Most kanji have two kinds of reading. The on'yomi (音読み, "sound reading") comes from the Chinese pronunciation that arrived with the character many centuries ago. The kun'yomi (訓読み, "meaning reading") is the native Japanese word that was attached to it.

As a rule of thumb, on readings appear in compounds of two or more kanji, and kun readings appear when a kanji stands alone or is followed by hiragana endings. The rule has many exceptions, which is why readings are best learned inside words.

Kanji	Meaning	Kun reading in a word	On reading in a word
山	mountain	山 yama, mountain	富士山 Fujisan, Mount Fuji
水	water	水 mizu, water	水曜日 suiyōbi, Wednesday
食	eat	食べる taberu, to eat	食事 shokuji, a meal
人	person	人 hito, person	日本人 Nihonjin, Japanese person; 三人 sannin, three people
生	life, birth, raw	生きる ikiru, to live; 生まれる umareru, to be born; 生ビール nama bīru, draught beer	学生 gakusei, student; 一生 isshō, a lifetime

The last row is the famous worst case. 生 has around a dozen readings, and nobody learns them as a list. People learn 学生, 生きる and 生ビール as words, and the readings come along for free.

Radicals and components

Kanji are built from a limited stock of parts. Each character has one radical (部首, bushu), the part under which dictionaries file it, and the radical often hints at meaning:

• 氵 (sanzui, "three drops of water"): 海 umi, sea; 池 ike, pond; 泳ぐ oyogu, to swim.
• 言 (gonben, "speech"): 話す hanasu, to speak; 語 go, language; 読む yomu, to read.

Many kanji also contain a phonetic component that hints at the on reading. 青 is read sei, and so are 清, 晴, 精 and 静. 寺 is read ji, and so are 時 and 持. These families are the nearest thing kanji have to a cheat sheet, and they only help with on readings.

Components are why kanji get easier as you go. The first 200 are 200 separate drawings. After that, a new kanji is usually two or three old friends in a new arrangement. The logic is the same as in Chinese, because the system was inherited whole.

The main methods compared

Method	How it works	Strengths	Weaknesses
Learning kanji in vocabulary	You learn words from a textbook or from reading, and pick up each kanji as it appears in them	Readings come in context; nothing is learned that you do not use; fits any course	No system for telling similar kanji apart; coverage is patchy for a long time
Remembering the Kanji (James Heisig)	Volume 1 teaches the meaning and writing of 2,200 kanji through components and invented stories, in an order based on components, with no readings	Very strong for telling kanji apart and for writing by hand; a fast first pass is possible	Months of work before you can read a word; English keywords are sometimes arbitrary; readings must be learned afterwards
WaniKani	A paid web course: radicals first, then kanji, then vocabulary, with ready-made mnemonics and spaced repetition; over 2,000 kanji and over 6,000 words according to the official site	No decisions to make; readings and words are included; the first three levels are free	Fixed pace that you cannot speed up; subscription cost; no handwriting, no grammar
School grade order	You follow the order of Japanese schools: the 1,026 kyōiku kanji by grade, then the rest	Plenty of cheap workbooks and children's books with matching kanji; clear milestones	Ordered for children who already speak Japanese; some simple-looking early kanji are not the most useful for adults
Anki decks	A flashcard program with spaced repetition; you download a shared kanji or vocabulary deck or build your own	Free on computer and Android; adapts to any method above; full control	Deck quality varies; you are the teacher, the pupil and the truant officer

These are not rivals in the strict sense. Heisig's order can be studied in Anki, WaniKani users learn vocabulary elsewhere too, and everyone ends up learning kanji in vocabulary sooner or later. All the systematic methods rely on spaced repetition to keep old kanji alive while new ones arrive.

Which method suits which learner

• You are taking a class or following a textbook: learn the kanji in your course vocabulary, and add a little component study so that 持 and 待 stop looking identical.
• You want a system and no planning: WaniKani. Try the free levels to see whether its mnemonic style suits you.
• You want to write by hand, or similar kanji keep blurring: Heisig, ideally as a short intensive pass alongside listening practice, not instead of it.
• You are on a budget and reasonably disciplined: Anki with a well-reviewed deck, at a fixed small number of new cards per day.
• You are preparing for the JLPT: vocabulary first, sorted by level. The exam tests kanji only through words and reading passages.
• You like workbooks, or want to read children's books early: school grade order.

Kungfucius's own leaning is plain: vocabulary in context as the main course, components as the seasoning. The worst method is the one you change every three weeks.

If you already know Chinese

You start with a large head start in meaning and almost none in sound. Most kanji correspond to Traditional forms or to Japan's own simplified shapes (shinjitai): 学 for 學, 国 for 國, 気 for 氣. The readings are new, and each kanji usually has several.

Watch for false friends. 手紙 (tegami) is a letter in Japanese and toilet paper in Chinese. 勉強 (benkyō) means study in Japanese and "reluctantly" in Chinese. 娘 (musume) is a daughter, not a mother, and 湯 (yu) is hot water, not soup. The background is on the Chinese characters page.

Should you write kanji by hand?

Recognition and handwriting are separate skills, and recognition is the one daily life demands. Typing Japanese only requires you to pick the right kanji from a list.

A reasonable middle path: write each new kanji a few times with correct stroke order when you first learn it, because the movement fixes the components in memory. Then stop drilling. Commit to full handwriting only if you need it: for a class with written tests, for the Kanji Kentei exam, or because you enjoy it. The JLPT is multiple choice and involves no handwriting at all.

A realistic timeline

The arithmetic is simple and slightly sobering. Five new kanji a day reaches 2,136 in about fourteen months. Three a day takes about two years. Ten a day looks like seven months on paper, but the daily review pile grows with every card, and many people who start at that pace stop.

Japanese schoolchildren spread the same list over nine years, surrounded by Japanese all day. For an adult learner studying alongside work, two to three years to know the jōyō kanji reasonably well is a normal result, not a slow one. You will be reading real material long before the end, with a dictionary for the gaps.

Two things decide whether the timeline holds: a daily number small enough to survive bad weeks, and reading. Kanji met only on flashcards fade; kanji met in sentences stay.

What to do next

1. Pick one method from the table today and give it eight weeks before judging it.
2. Set a daily number of new kanji you could keep up while ill: three to five is plenty.
3. Learn at least one common word for every kanji, with its reading.
4. Start reading early: graded readers, or manga with furigana, as soon as you know a few hundred.
5. Check your progress against a JLPT level once or twice a year, if you like deadlines.