How many kanji do you need to know?

Japan’s great kanji dictionary, the 大漢和辞典 (Dai Kanwa Jiten), lists about 50,000 kanji, but you need only a small part of them. The official list of kanji for everyday use, the jōyō kanji, has 2,136: it’s the guide for kanji in newspapers and official documents, and even the older, shorter list covered more than 96% of the kanji in a large survey of books and magazines. You can start reading long before that: the old Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) expected about 100 kanji at its easiest level and about 2,000 at its hardest.

How many kanji are there?

There’s no final count. Kanji are Chinese characters, and over the centuries the number of characters, old forms and variants kept growing. The Shuowen Jiezi, a Chinese dictionary from around 100 CE, explained 9,353 characters. Today the Dai Kanwa Jiten, Japan’s largest kanji dictionary, has about 50,000, and the character sets that computers and phones use for Japanese include more than 10,000. Only a small part of them turn up in modern Japanese.

The word for a written character, 字 (ji), has that growth built into it. It’s a child (子) under a roof (宀), and its old meaning was to give birth to and raise a child; the child also gives the sound. In a note at the end of the Shuowen, its author explains that the first characters were drawings of things, called 文 (bun), and that the characters later made by combining shapes and sounds were called 字, because they breed and multiply. The word 漢字 (kanji) itself means “Han characters”, that is, Chinese characters. The lesson on what emoji means has more on 文 and 字.

The jōyō kanji: 2,136 for everyday use

The list that matters most is the 常用漢字 (jouyou kanji), the “kanji for common use”. It was published by the Japanese government in November 2010 and is looked after by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. It gives 2,136 kanji with their standard forms and 4,388 readings, and its first line says what it’s for: it’s the guide to kanji use when writing modern Japanese in everyday public life, such as laws, official documents, newspapers, magazines and broadcasting.

It’s a guide, not a ban. The list says it doesn’t reach into science, technology, the arts or other specialist fields, or into how individuals write. It also leaves out proper nouns, apart from the kanji in prefecture names, so family names and place names can use kanji that aren’t on it.

The list has grown over time. The first jōyō list, from 1981, had 1,945 kanji, and the 2010 revision brought it to 2,136. Even the old list covered nearly all the kanji people meet in print: in a survey of about 50 million kanji in 860 books, magazines and textbooks, the Agency for Cultural Affairs found that its 1,945 kanji made up more than 96% of them.

The kyouiku kanji: 1,026 in primary school

Japanese children learn the jōyō kanji in stages. The first 1,026, the 教育漢字 (kyouiku kanji) or “education kanji”, are spread over the six years of primary school:

The count changed with the curriculum that primary schools have followed since 2020. Before that it was 1,006: the Ministry of Education added 20 kanji used in the names of prefectures, such as the 岡 of 岡山 (Okayama), the 阪 of 大阪 (Osaka) and the 奈 of 奈良 (Nara). The other 1,110 jōyō kanji come in secondary school.

The jinmeiyou kanji: extra kanji for names

Japanese given names can use any jōyō kanji, plus the kanji on a second list, the 人名用漢字 (jinmeiyou kanji), “kanji for use in names”, kept by the Ministry of Justice. That list has had 864 kanji since June 2026, when one more was added, so given names can draw on 3,000 kanji in all.

How many kanji for each JLPT level?

The JLPT stopped publishing lists of kanji, vocabulary and grammar when it was revised in 2010, so there’s no official count for any level. The old test did give guidance: about 100 kanji for Level 4, 300 for Level 3, 1,000 for Level 2 and 2,000 for Level 1. The JLPT says that someone who could pass the old Levels 4, 3, 2 and 1 can pass N5, N4, N2 and N1, and that N3, added in 2010, sits between the old Levels 3 and 2.

The old guidance counted every kanji up to that level, so compare it with the running total. Our lists, the ones on our N5 and N4 pages, follow common unofficial lists and place every jōyō kanji somewhere from N5 to N1. Other lists draw the lines in different places, so treat any count per level as approximate.

What you can read with how many kanji

Here’s the JLPT’s own description of what you can read at each level, next to the number of kanji our lists reach by then:

• About 80 (N5): typical expressions and sentences written in hiragana, katakana and basic kanji.
• About 300 (N4): passages on familiar daily topics in basic vocabulary and kanji.
• About 800 (N3): everyday writing with specific content, and summary information such as newspaper headlines.
• About 1,100 (N2): clearly written newspaper and magazine articles and commentary.
• All 2,136 (N1): complex and abstract writing, such as newspaper editorials and critiques.

Even the first 80 go a long way, because they’re the kanji for numbers, days, people and everyday actions. Every kanji in these sentences is on our N5 list:

• この本は千五百円です。

  Kono hon wa sen gohyaku en desu.

  This book is 1,500 yen.

• 毎日、電車で学校に行きます。

  Mainichi, densha de gakkou ni ikimasu.

  I go to school by train every day.

• 今日は雨です。

  Kyou wa ame desu.

  It's raining today.

Kanji are only part of reading, though. You also need the words and the grammar, and knowing a kanji doesn’t mean you know every word it appears in.

• Kanji stories

  5 easy kanji to learn first (山 火 木 人 口)

• Kanji stories

  How to say a million in Japanese (百万)

• Kanji stories

  The kanji for rain has raindrops in it (雨)

How long does it take?

Divide the number of kanji by the number you learn each day. Here’s how many days each level takes at 3, 5 or 8 new kanji a day, counting from your very first kanji, so the N4 row includes N5:

All 2,136 take just under two years at 3 a day, about 14 months at 5 and about 9 months at 8. That’s the time to meet each kanji once. Reviews carry on alongside, and real life brings days off, so leave yourself some slack. Chirami lets you pick 3, 5 or 8 new characters a day and shows the date you’ll finish your level. For how to spend those minutes, see how to learn kanji.

Common questions

How many kanji are there in total?

There’s no exact number. Japan’s great kanji dictionary, the Dai Kanwa Jiten, lists about 50,000, but modern Japanese uses only a small part of them. Everyday writing is built on the 2,136 jōyō kanji, and given names can use 864 more.

How many kanji do I need for JLPT N5?

There’s no official list. The old test’s guidance for the matching level was about 100 kanji, and our JLPT N5 kanji list has 80: numbers, days, people, directions and other simple, common kanji.

How many kanji do I need for JLPT N1?

The old test’s guidance for its top level was about 2,000. Our lists include all 2,136 jōyō kanji by N1, so plan on the whole jōyō list.

How many kanji do you need to read a newspaper?

The jōyō list is the official guide for kanji in newspapers, so knowing all 2,136 is the goal for reading one comfortably. You can start sooner: the JLPT puts newspaper headlines at N3, around 800 kanji on our lists, and clearly written articles at N2, around 1,100.

How many kanji do Japanese people know?

Japanese children learn 1,026 kanji in primary school, and by the end of junior high school, at about 15, they’re expected to read most of the 2,136 jōyō kanji. Schools put reading first: at that stage, the target for writing is still the 1,026 from primary school.

The kanji in this guide

Tap Draw it to watch the stroke order. Numbers show where each stroke starts.

Draw it

Draw it

Sources

• Agency for Cultural Affairs: Jōyō kanji table, 2010 cabinet notice (Japanese)
• Agency for Cultural Affairs: Jōyō kanji table, preface and table (PDF, Japanese)
• Agency for Cultural Affairs: Do you know the jōyō kanji table? (readings, the 1981 list, the 96% survey; Japanese)
• MEXT: Primary school curriculum guide for Japanese, kanji by school year (PDF, Japanese)
• MEXT: Junior high school curriculum guide for Japanese (PDF, Japanese)
• MEXT: Curriculum revision schedule (PDF, Japanese)
• Ministry of Justice: Kanji that can be used in children's names (Japanese)
• Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun: 勒 added to the kanji for names, 864 in all (June 2026, Japanese)
• JLPT: FAQ (no lists since 2010, old and new levels)
• JLPT: N1-N5 summary of linguistic competence
• JLPT: Old test levels and their kanji guidance (PDF, Japanese)
• JapanKnowledge: Dai Kanwa Jiten
• Wikisource: Shuowen Jiezi, postface (Chinese)
• Wiktionary: 字 (glyph origin)
• Wikipedia: Kanji

Written by the Chirami team with the help of AI, then checked against JMdict, KANJIDIC2 and the sources above. How we write. Spotted a mistake? Email support@brightsmilesolutions.org.