Kyōiku Kanji

The are kanji which Japanese elementary school students should learn from first through sixth grade. Also known as , these kanji are listed on the . The table is developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT). Although the list is designed for Japanese students, it can also be used as a sequence of learning characters by non-native speakers as a means of focusing on the most commonly used kanji.

kanji are a subset (1,026) of the 2,136 characters of kanji.

Versions of the list

*1946 created with 881 characters
*1977 expanded to 996 characters
*1989 expanded to 1,006 characters
*2017 expanded to 1,026 characters
**The following 20 characters, all used in prefecture names, were added in 2017.
** ( Ibaraki), ( Ehime), ( Shizuoka, Okayama and Fukuoka), ( Niigata), ( Gifu), ( Kumamoto), ( Kagawa), ( Saga), ( Saitama), ( Nagasaki and Miyazaki), ( Shiga), ( Kagoshima), ( Okinawa), ( Fukui), ( Okinawa), ( Tochigi), ( Kanagawa and Nara), ( Yamanashi), ( Ōsaka), ( Gifu)

List by grade

* The does not contain readings or meanings of each kanji.
* Many kanji have complex meanings and nuances, or express concepts not directly translatable into English. In those cases, the English meanings mentioned here are approximate.
* In the readings, readings after - (hyphen) are okurigana.
* A - (hyphen) at the end of the -yomi corresponds to a small tsu in kana, which indicates that the following consonant is geminated.

First grade (80 kanji)

Second grade (160 kanji)

Third grade (200 kanji)

Fourth grade (202 kanji)

Fifth grade (193 kanji)

Sixth grade (191 kanji)

List by radicals

List by number of strokes

List by Unicode code point

List by frequency

Special characters

are characters originally created in Japan; two of them are kanji:
(Grade 4) and (Grade 3). There are also 8 within the secondary-school kanji and 16 within the kanji.
The character and some others are also used in Chinese now, but most are unknown outside Japan.

are characters and combinations of characters that have different meanings in Japanese and Chinese

For example, the character combination means 'letter' in Japanese, but 'toilet paper' in Chinese. However, the isolated characters have the same meaning in both languages: (Grade 1) means 'hand', and (Grade 2) means 'paper'.

Simplified characters and their traditional forms

Differences in simplification between China and Japan

China and Japan simplified their writing systems independently from each other. After World War II, their relations were hostile, so they did not cooperate. Traditional Chinese characters are still officially used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Korea ( Hanja supplemented Hangul, but are now mainly historical), and by many overseas Chinese.

In Chinese, many more characters were simplified than in Japanese; some characters were simplified in only one language; other characters were simplified in the same way in both languages, and other characters were simplified in both languages but in different ways. This means that those who want to learn the writing systems of both languages must sometimes learn at least three different variations of one character: traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and modern Japanese (for example ). Some others have more variations, such as (), some of which are considered the older forms of Chinese characters and variations of different Chinese regions, and the older forms of Japanese characters ().

Traditional characters that may cause problems displaying

Note that within the kanji, there are 26 characters; the old forms of which may cause problems displaying:

* Grade 2 (2 kanji):
* Grade 3 (8 kanji):
* Grade 4 (6 kanji):
* Grade 5 (1 kanji):
* Grade 6 (9 kanji):
* Within the kanji, the same is true for 36 secondary-school kanji, so, in total, 62 of the 2,136 kanji have traditional forms that may cause problems displaying.

These characters are Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs for which the old form () and the new form () have been unified under the Unicode standard. Although the old and new forms are distinguished under the JIS X 0213 standard, the old forms map to Unicode CJK Compatibility Ideographs which are considered by Unicode to be canonically equivalent to the new forms and may not be distinguished by user agents. Therefore, depending on the user environment, it may not be possible to see the distinction between old and new forms of the characters. In particular, all Unicode normalization methods merge the old characters with the new ones.

List of simplified kanji

For example, is the simplified form of .
Note that is used to simplify three different traditional characters (, , and ).

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*

The kanji and their Chinese equivalents

The characters are sorted by the radicals of the Japanese kanji. The two and , which have no Chinese equivalents, are not listed here. See also the section above.

Same form in Chinese and Japanese

The following kanji are characters of Group 1 (not simplified in either language, e.g. ). For characters of Group 2 (same simplification in China and Japan, but a traditional form exists, e.g. ), see above.

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Different forms in Chinese and Japanese

The order is "Modern Japanese -Traditional Chinese - Simplified Chinese", e.g. . Some characters were simplified the same way in both languages, the others were simplified in one language only.

*

See also

*
* List of kanji
* List of kanji by stroke count

References

External links

Kanji-Trainer.org
A free flashcard-style kanji learning tool including selection by kanji, explaining the components of each character and providing mnemonic phrases. (account required)
*
p.42-45 Official list of kanji by grade

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Kanji
Education in Japan
Kyōiku kanji