How to Learn Kanji: A Step-by-Step Method for Beginners

Japanese is written with three scripts at once: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Hiragana and katakana stand for sounds, while kanji carry meaning. That is what makes kanji feel like the big mountain of Japanese. There are a lot of them, many have more than one reading, and some look almost identical at first glance.

For a sense of scale, the official jōyō kanji list, last revised in 2010, contains 2,136 characters. It is the standard set for everyday writing such as newspapers and official documents, and it is what Japanese students learn by the end of secondary school. You do not need all of them to start reading, and the work gets easier as you go. Most kanji are built from a limited set of reusable parts, so every kanji you learn makes later ones quicker to pick up.

Here is a small example. 休 (きゅう, やすむ) means rest. It is made of a person (亻, a narrow form of 人) next to a tree (木). Once you know those two pieces, the character almost explains itself: a person resting against a tree.

Step 1: Learn hiragana and katakana first

Before you study kanji seriously, learn the two kana scripts. Kanji readings are written in kana, dictionaries list them in kana, and beginner texts put small kana (furigana) above unfamiliar kanji. If kana are still slow for you, every kanji lesson becomes twice as hard.

The basic sets are small: 46 hiragana and 46 katakana. Our guide on how to learn hiragana fast has a short day-by-day plan, and the same row-by-row approach works for katakana afterward. Keep a kana chart open while you study until you no longer need it.

Step 2: Start with simple, high-frequency kanji

Your first kanji should be simple in shape and common in real Japanese. Many of them started as pictures of the thing they mean, which makes them easy to remember:

• 日 (にち, ひ): sun, day
• 月 (げつ, つき): moon, month
• 山 (さん, やま): mountain
• 川 (せん, かわ): river
• 口 (こう, くち): mouth
• Numbers such as 一 (いち), 二 (に) and 三 (さん), which are written with one, two and three lines

A good first target is the set covered by beginner JLPT study lists. The JLPT N5 kanji list groups around 100 of the most useful characters, and our JLPT N5 kanji study plan spreads them over ten weeks.

Step 3: Learn the building blocks

Most kanji are combinations of smaller parts. The traditional dictionary parts are called radicals, and learners often use the word for any recurring component. Knowing them turns a jumble of lines into a few familiar pieces.

For example, the speech component 言 appears on the left of 語 (ご, language), 話 (わ, はなす, talk) and 読 (どく, よむ, read). All three are about words and language. You do not need to memorize every radical up front, but learning the common ones early pays off quickly. See kanji radicals explained for the most useful ones.

Step 4: Learn each kanji inside real words

A kanji on its own is only half the story, because its reading depends on the word it appears in. 日 is read ひ when it stands alone, にち in 毎日 (まいにち, every day) and に in 日本 (にほん, Japan). If you memorize a list of readings without words, you will not know which one to use. If you learn words, the right reading comes along for free.

For each new kanji, aim to know:

• One core meaning in English, as a short keyword
• One or two common words that use it, with their readings
• Its parts, so you can describe the shape in your own words
• Its stroke order, at least loosely, so you can write it from memory

Readings come in two families, onyomi and kunyomi. Our guide to onyomi vs kunyomi explains the patterns that help you guess which one a word uses.

Step 5: Review with spaced repetition

Learning a kanji once is easy. Remembering it a month later is the real challenge. Spaced repetition solves this by scheduling reviews at growing intervals: you see a new kanji again soon, then a few days later, then a week or more later, as long as you keep remembering it. Characters you forget come back sooner.

The key is to test yourself rather than just look at the answer. Try to recall the meaning and reading before you reveal it. Our guide to spaced repetition for Japanese covers how to set this up without drowning in reviews.

Step 6: Write by hand, but do not overdo it

Writing a kanji by hand forces you to notice every detail, which helps you tell similar characters apart. You do not need to fill pages with each character. Writing a new kanji a few times with the correct stroke order, then writing it from memory during reviews, is usually enough. The kanji stroke order rules guide covers the patterns, and the stroke order lookup shows any individual character.

A simple daily routine

1. Do your due reviews first, before learning anything new.
2. Learn three to five new kanji, each with one or two example words.
3. Write each new kanji a few times, saying the word out loud.
4. Read a few short sentences that use kanji you already know.
5. Stop while it still feels manageable, and come back tomorrow.

Consistency beats intensity. Fifteen focused minutes every day will take you further than a long session once a week, because spaced reviews only work if you show up for them. For a 15 to 30 minute plan you can follow, see our Japanese study routine.

If you would like this routine on your phone, Moji shows kanji on your Lock Screen with widgets, schedules spaced repetition reviews, and includes guided stroke-order writing and radical practice, with progress tracked across JLPT N5 to N1.