What is Kanji? A Complete Guide for Beginners

Introduction to Kanji

Kanji (漢字) are the logographic characters used in Japanese that originated from Chinese characters. Unlike hiragana and katakana, which mainly represent sounds, kanji usually carry both meaning and one or more readings. A single character can represent ideas like "person", "tree", "study", or "language".

Modern Japanese writing combines the three scripts: kanji + hiragana + katakana. Kanji handle most of the content words (nouns, verb stems, adjective stems), while hiragana is used for grammar and katakana for foreign words and emphasis. This mixture looks complex, but it actually makes Japanese easier to read by visually separating functions in a sentence.

History and Origin of Kanji

Kanji began as Chinese characters, with very early forms carved on bones and bronze in ancient China. Over time, they spread across East Asia and were adopted by neighboring cultures, including Japan. The earliest evidence of Chinese writing being used in Japan dates from around the 4th–5th century CE.

At first, Japanese elites used Chinese for official documents, philosophy, and Buddhism. The Japanese language, however, is very different from Chinese in grammar and structure. To write native Japanese, people began using characters in more flexible ways.

In the modern era, especially after World War II, Japan carried out script reforms to make written Japanese more accessible. These reforms:

• Standardized simplified forms of many characters.
• Created official lists like Jōyō kanji (常用漢字), the "regular-use" kanji taught in schools and used in public life.
• Defined Kyōiku kanji (教育漢字), the kanji taught in elementary school, gradually building up literacy.

The result is today's system: a large but structured set of characters that every Japanese student learns step by step through school.

How Many Kanji Are There?

If you search around the internet, you'll see numbers like 50,000 or even more kanji. That can be terrifying for a beginner—but the reality is much kinder.

For a learner, a useful mental model is:

• Around 100–150 kanji: basic survival Japanese (signs, menus, very simple texts).
• Around 300–500 kanji: JLPT N4–N5 range, simple books and graded readers.
• Around 1,000–1,500 kanji: general reading comfort for many everyday materials.
• Around 2,000+ kanji: can read newspapers and broad native content with occasional unknown characters.

Your goal doesn't have to be "all kanji ever". Instead, aim for functional literacy—enough to read what you personally care about: manga, games, novels, work documents, or everyday websites.

Structure of Kanji: Radicals, Strokes & Components

Kanji are not random pictures. Each character has an internal structure built from strokes and components that often hint at meaning or pronunciation.

• Strokes (画): The individual lines that make up a kanji. Each character has a fixed number of strokes and a standard stroke order.
• Radicals (部首): Components used to categorize and look up kanji in dictionaries; they often relate to the meaning.
• Semantic–phonetic components: Many kanji combine one part that hints at meaning and another part that hints at pronunciation.

Learning a core set of about 50–100 common radicals gives you a huge advantage: you'll start seeing patterns instead of random shapes, and you'll be able to guess meanings more easily and look up new kanji much faster.

Readings and Pronunciation

Most kanji have more than one way to read them. These different readings are called on-yomi and kun-yomi.

• On-yomi (音読み): Sino-Japanese readings that came from Chinese pronunciations. They're often used in compound words made of two or more kanji (熟語 / じゅくご).
• Kun-yomi (訓読み): Native Japanese readings. These usually appear when a kanji stands alone or with hiragana endings (okurigana).

There are some general patterns learners often use:

• Single kanji with hiragana after it (食べる, 走った, 読みます) often use kun-yomi.
• Two-kanji compound nouns (勉強, 電話, 会社) usually use on-yomi.
• Place names and personal names can be irregular and often need to be memorized case-by-case.

At first, multiple readings feel confusing. Over time, though, you remember readings as part of whole words instead of as abstract lists. This is why learning kanji in vocabulary and sentences is so much more effective than memorizing bare characters.

How Kanji is Used in Japanese

In real Japanese sentences, kanji, hiragana, and katakana work together. Here's a simple example:

Kanji carry most of the semantic weight, while hiragana shows the grammar and katakana adds special effects (loanwords, emphasis, technical terms). This layered system is one reason native Japanese readers can quickly grasp sentence structure at a glance.

To see how kanji compares to the other scripts, you might also want to revisit:

• What is Hiragana? A Complete Guide for Beginners
• What is Katakana? Understanding Japan's Second Writing System

Furigana: Reading Help for Kanji

Furigana (ふりがな) are small kana (usually hiragana) written above or beside kanji to show how to read them. If kanji are the "main actors", furigana are the subtitles.

You'll find furigana in children's books, manga, textbooks for learners, and in many places where a character might be difficult or important (for example, names of people and places).

Furigana are especially powerful for learners because they let you:

• Read texts that would otherwise be above your current kanji level.
• Connect kanji shape + meaning + pronunciation in one glance.
• Gradually wean yourself off: you can cover the furigana and see if you still remember the reading.

To get full benefit from furigana, make sure your hiragana is solid first. Once you can read hiragana automatically, furigana becomes an incredibly efficient way to learn kanji.

Learning Kanji: Where to Start

Kanji has a scary reputation, but with the right approach it becomes a long, steady climb rather than a wall. The key is to combine structure (radicals, stroke order) with real usage (words, phrases, and reading).

Practice Resources

Here are practical ways to keep seeing kanji again and again until they stick.

• Practice on KanaMastery

  Strengthen your kanji recognition with kyouiku kanji quizzes and expand your vocabulary with JLPT practice from N5 through N1. Frequent, low-pressure practice is one of the fastest ways to build confidence.

  Try Our Practice Games

• Online Kanji Dictionaries & Tools

  These resources help you look up kanji, check stroke order, and see example sentences:

  • Jisho.org
  • NHK Japanese Lessons

• Reading Practice for Beginners

  To truly "own" a kanji, you need to see it in real sentences many times:

  • Graded readers designed for learners, with furigana and controlled vocabulary.
  • Manga or light novels that include furigana for harder kanji.
  • Easy news websites and blogs written for children or learners.
  • Short daily reading habit: even 5–10 minutes a day adds up quickly.

Conclusion

Kanji is challenging, but it's also what makes Japanese rich and expressive. Understanding how kanji came from Chinese characters, how they're structured, how readings work, and how they combine with kana turns the system from "impossible" into "complex but learnable."

Ready to continue your Japanese journey? Combine kanji study with strong kana skills and interactive practice to build a reading foundation that will support you for years.