Kanji
漢字
Kanji are 'logographic' characters taken from the Chinese writing system. The word Kanji 漢字 literally means Chinese characters.
Each character can have several ways of reading it. These are known as On'yomi 音読み and Kun'yomi 訓読み - or more simply 'On' or 'Kun'.
There are 2,136 characters learned between the ages of 6-18 in Japanese school, in terms of foreign language study it is useful to imagine it in the following terms;
| Characters per day | Time to learn all major Kanji |
| 1 | ~6 years |
| 2 | ~3 years |
| 3 | ~2 years |
| 4 | ~18 months |
| 5 | ~14 months |
| 6 | ~1 year |
| 8 | ~9 months |
| 12 | ~6 months |
| 24 | ~3 months |
These readings are the original Chinese sounds of the Kanji characters are generally used when there was no existing word or concept in Japanese at the time the character was adopted.
Because some characters were adopted at different times and from different parts of China there can often be several On readings associated with different sounds and even meanings - this makes learning Kanji proficiently a pretty daunting task!
These readings are for words or concepts which already existed in Japanese at the time the character was adopted. Kun'yomi literally means 'native reading'.
Many Kanji will not have a Kun reading if they are of Chinese origin and had no Japanese equivalent at time of adoption.
The opposite also applies, where Kanji have been created by combination of existing characters to form a unique new one there will be no On reading - because these Kanji are of Japanese origin.
| Meanings in Chinese & Japanese at time of adoption | |
| No Japanese word or concept at time of adoption | |
| Adapted Kanji to represent uniquely Japanese word or concept |
Unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules about which reading to use. However a few general guidelines will get you started and hopefully ease the learning process...
Remember this is not always the case - there are many exceptions!
Thankfully in many situations there will be small hiragana characters written above the Kanji to aid reading - though this is by no means universal.
There are 2,136 Kanji in common use, however there are an additional ca.3000 Kanji used in people's names and also many more obscure characters too.
| Character Set | Education Level | Age | Number | Subtotal |
| Kyōiku kanji | Grade 1 | 6-7 | 80 | 1,006 |
| Grade 2 | 7-8 | 160 | ||
| Grade 3 | 8-9 | 200 | ||
| Grade 4 | 9-10 | 200 | ||
| Grade 5 | 10-11 | 185 | ||
| Grade 6 | 11-12 | 181 | ||
| Jōyō kanji | High School | 12+ | 1,130 | 1,130 |
| Total: | 2,136 | |||
If not from this set of 2,136 Kanji you would expect to see furigana characters because they are considered outside of 'general use'.