How Many Kanji Are There, and How Many Do You Need?
There is no fixed total: large dictionaries such as the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten list about 50,000 kanji, but most are rare or historical. For everyday Japanese, the number that matters is the official jōyō list of 2,136 kanji. You can start reading simple text with around 100, and commonly cited JLPT estimates range from about 100 kanji for N5 to about 2,000 for N1.
The short answer: there is no fixed total
Kanji are not a closed alphabet with a set number of letters. They are an open collection of characters that has grown and changed over many centuries, so nobody can give one exact count. The most comprehensive Japanese kanji dictionary, the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, contains about 50,000 characters. Large Chinese dictionaries go further still, with tens of thousands more.
Those huge totals are mostly made up of rare characters, old variant forms and characters that appear only in classical texts or a handful of names. A Japanese adult reads the news, books and websites without knowing anything close to 50,000 kanji. So the more useful questions are how many kanji are in everyday use, and how many you need for your own goals.
The official lists: jōyō, kyōiku and jinmeiyō
Japan answers the first question with official lists. The most important is the jōyō kanji list, the official guide to the kanji used in general writing such as government documents. Its current version, issued in 2010, contains 2,136 characters. A subset of it, the kyōiku kanji, is the 1,026 characters taught in elementary school. A separate list, the jinmeiyō kanji, covers extra characters that may be used in personal names.
| List or source | Number of kanji | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Kyōiku kanji | 1,026 | Taught in Japanese elementary school (grades 1 to 6) |
| Jōyō kanji | 2,136 | Official list for general use, revised in 2010 |
| Jinmeiyō kanji | 863 | Additional characters allowed in names (as of 2017) |
| JIS X 0208 | 6,355 | Kanji in a widely used Japanese computer character set |
| Dai Kan-Wa Jiten | About 50,000 | Comprehensive kanji dictionary |
The jōyō list is a guideline, not a ceiling. Educated readers also know many characters outside it, especially ones that appear in family names, place names and set phrases. Still, for a learner, 2,136 is the clearest finish line for general literacy.
How many kanji do you need to read a newspaper?
Newspapers are written for general adult readers, so the jōyō list is the practical benchmark. If you know most of the 2,136 jōyō kanji, plus the common characters used in names and places, you can handle most of the characters in an ordinary news article.
Two caveats matter here. First, kanji are not used equally often. Characters such as 日, 人, 年, 大 and 国 appear constantly, while many jōyō kanji show up only now and then. That is good news, because the first few hundred characters you learn do a lot of work, and our guide to the most common kanji groups the top ones by theme. Second, knowing a kanji is not the same as knowing every word it appears in. News writing uses many compound words, and you need that vocabulary as well as the individual characters.
How many kanji for each JLPT level? (estimates)
The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) used to publish content specifications. The old four-level test, used until 2009, expected roughly 100 kanji at Level 4, 300 at Level 3, 1,000 at Level 2 and 2,000 at Level 1. Since the current five-level test started in 2010, there are no official kanji lists for N5 to N1.
Textbooks and study sites still use estimates based on the old lists. These are commonly cited estimates, not official numbers, and different sources vary:
- N5: about 100 kanji
- N4: about 300 kanji in total
- N3: about 650 kanji in total
- N2: about 1,000 kanji in total
- N1: about 2,000 kanji in total, close to the full jōyō list
Our JLPT N5 kanji list is a good first target, and the N5 kanji study plan spreads it over ten weeks.
How many kanji you need for your goals
Instead of aiming for a single magic number, match your target to what you want to read:
- Travel and signs: a few dozen kanji go a long way. Knowing 入口 (いりぐち, entrance), 出口 (でぐち, exit), 男 (man), 女 (woman) and 駅 (えき, station) already helps.
- Beginner textbooks and graded readers: around 100 to 300 kanji, with furigana for the rest.
- Intermediate reading: around 1,000 kanji lets you follow many everyday texts, looking up the occasional character.
- Adult books, news and work documents: most of the 2,136 jōyō kanji, plus the vocabulary built from them.
Manga and children's books often print furigana next to kanji, so you can enjoy them well before you know every character on the page. Every kanji you do know makes those pages faster to read and frees your attention for grammar and vocabulary. Our guide to furigana explains how to use them without leaning on them.
Why the number is less scary than it looks
2,136 sounds like a lot, but kanji are not 2,136 unrelated drawings. Most are built from a limited set of reusable parts, so each one you learn makes the next easier. Our guide to kanji radicals covers the most useful building blocks.
Kanji also combine into words you can partly guess. Once you know 電 (electricity) and 車 (vehicle), the word 電車 (でんしゃ, train) makes sense. Once you know 学 (study) and 校 (school), 学校 (がっこう, school) is easy to remember.
The real question is pace. Our guide on how long it takes to learn kanji does the math for different daily targets, and how to remember kanji covers techniques that make each new character stick.
Do not try to learn the jōyō list in its official order. Start with simple, frequent characters and learn each one through a word you will actually see.
If you want a steady way to work through them, Moji tracks your progress across JLPT N5 to N1, with spaced repetition reviews and kanji on your Lock Screen.
Frequently asked questions
- How many kanji are there in total?
- There is no definitive count. The Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, the most comprehensive Japanese kanji dictionary, lists about 50,000 characters, but most of them are rare or historical and are not used in modern Japanese.
- How many kanji does an average Japanese person know?
- There is no single reliable figure. Japanese schools teach all 2,136 jōyō kanji by the end of compulsory education, and adults also recognize many characters from names and places outside that list.
- How many kanji do I need for JLPT N5?
- The JLPT does not publish official kanji lists. Study materials commonly estimate about 100 kanji for N5, based on the Level 4 list from the older version of the test.
- Are 2,136 kanji enough to read Japanese?
- For most everyday writing, yes. The jōyō list is the official standard for general use. You will still meet some characters outside it in names, literature and specialist texts, and you also need the vocabulary those kanji write.
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