Jōyō Kanji

The are those kanji listed on the , officially announced by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The current list of 2,136 characters was issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the kanji, which was the initial list of secondary school-level kanji standardized after World War II. The list is not a comprehensive list of all characters and readings in regular use; rather, it is intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, as well as a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents. Due to the requirement that official government documents make use of only kanji and their readings, several rare characters are also included due to their use in the Constitution of Japan, which was being written at the same time the original 1,850-character kanji list was compiled.

The 2,136 kanji in the kanji consist of:
* 1,026 kanji taught in primary school (Grade 1-6) (the kanji)
* 1,110 additional kanji taught in secondary school (Grade 7-9)

List

Changes from the kanji

In 1981, the kanji replaced the kanji as the standardized list of common kanji. The differences between the two consisted of 95 additional characters, and the simplification of as .

History

*1923: The Ministry of Education specified 1,962 kanji and 154 simplified characters.
*1931: The former kanji list was revised and 1,858 characters were specified.
*1942: 1,134 characters as standard kanji and 1,320 characters as sub- kanji were specified.
*1946: The 1,850 characters of kanji were adopted by law "as those most essential for common use and everyday communication". This list included 881 "basic requirement" kanji for elementary school.
*1981: The 1,945 characters of kanji were adopted, replacing the list of kanji."In 1981 the list superseded the old list — the list of Chinese characters which was announced in November 1946 and designated for daily use." -''Japan Times'' editorial
"Revising the list of kanji"
, Nov. 16, 2008, retrieved 27 May 2009.
*2010: The list was revised on 30 November to include an additional 196 characters and remove 5 characters (, , , , and ), for a total of 2,136. The amendment also made changes to the readings of ''kanji'' present in the previous kanji list. Twenty-eight ''kanji'' gained new readings, three ''kanji'' lost obscure readings and the of was changed from to . The 196 additional characters are:

:
: Note: Characters in bold are used in the names of prefectures. kanji followed by a character in brackets are not included in JIS X 0208; the character in brackets is the unofficial print variant JIS X 0208 does have. JIS X 0208 also lacks , but does include the official variant . The kanji , , , and also have official variants.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology instructed teachers to start teaching the new characters in fiscal 2012, so that junior high school students would be able to read them and high school students would be able to write them. High schools and universities started using the characters in their entrance exams in the 2015 academic year.http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/govt-to-announce-new-list-of-kanji-for-common-use-at-end-of-month

See also

* kanji (List of kanji by school year)
* kanji
*
* Japanese script reform
* Kanji radicals
* Learning kanji
* The ''List of Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters'', a similar standardized list of characters published by the Chinese Ministry of Education, including those designated as "frequently-used" and "commonly-used"
* '' Basic Hanja for educational use'', a standardized list of Chinese characters used in Korean (Hanja) published by the South Korean Ministry of Education

References

External links

List of Kanji (Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs)

Online kanji database

{{DEFAULTSORT:Joyo Kanji
Kanji
1981 documents
Japanese writing system
Chinese character lists