Study Japanese 101

How Many Kanji Do You Need to Read Japanese?

The jōyō kanji list, Japan's official guide for everyday writing, has 2,136 characters. The JLPT publishes no kanji list. Set a target by the text you want to read, count words rather than characters, and start reading with furigana now.

Study Japanese 101 editorial team · · 5 min read

Japan’s official reference list for everyday writing, the 常用漢字表 (jōyō kanji list), contains 2,136 characters. It is the closest thing to an official answer for reading newspapers and public documents without help. You do not need all of them to start reading. With furigana, the small kana printed beside kanji, you can read learner news and graded books before you know many characters. A more useful question is how many kanji the next text you want to read requires.

Where 2,136 comes from

The jōyō list was issued as a Cabinet notice on November 30, 2010, and is published by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. The list itself states that it contains 2,136 characters. It describes itself as a guide (目安, meyasu) for kanji use in laws, official documents, newspapers, magazines and broadcasting.

Three details in that document matter for learners:

  • It is a guide, not a limit. The preface says the list does not extend to specialist fields such as science, technology and the arts, or to individuals’ own writing.
  • It does not cover names. Apart from the kanji in prefecture names and a few similar names, it does not cover proper nouns. Names of people and places can use characters that are not on the list.
  • It lists readings, not only shapes. 生 alone has twelve listed readings. They include セイ in 先生 (sensei, teacher), ショウ in 一生 (isshō, a lifetime), 生きる (ikiru, to live), 生まれる (umareru, to be born) and なま in 生の野菜 (nama no yasai, raw vegetables). An appendix (付表) adds words that are read as a whole, such as 今日 (kyō, today) and 大人 (otona, adult).

Japanese schoolchildren take years to cover this ground. In the national curriculum published by the Ministry of Education (MEXT course of study), elementary school follows a grade-by-grade kanji list. The aim for the third year of middle school is to read most of the remaining jōyō kanji. That makes 2,136 a long-term target, not an entry requirement.

What the JLPT says, and does not say

The JLPT does not publish a kanji list. Its FAQ explains that, since the 2010 revision, it no longer publishes test content specifications because a list of vocabulary, kanji and grammar items was “not necessarily appropriate.” The official level summary describes kanji only loosely. At N5, you read text in hiragana, katakana and “basic kanji.” At N4, you read passages on familiar daily topics written in basic vocabulary and kanji. N3 adds the gist of newspaper headlines, and N2 adds clearly written newspaper articles.

A figure such as “N5 needs about 100 kanji” does not come from the current test. Numbers like this come from textbooks, apps or the pre-2010 test specifications, which the JLPT no longer publishes. Those lists can still be a reasonable study order. Do not treat them as official pass thresholds.

Count words you can read, not characters

Recognizing a character on its own does not mean you can read the words that use it, as the twelve readings of 生 show. The practical test is whether you can read 先生 and 生まれる where they appear in a sentence. For that reason, learning kanji inside vocabulary is often a better use of time than tracking a character total. The kanji sequence post covers the choice between a fixed course and learning characters from what you read.

A rough target by reading goal

These are editorial suggestions, not official levels.

  • Graded readers and learner news. Start now. NHK News Web Easy prints furigana, and the free Tadoku library marks titles with furigana or hiragana-only text. The graded reader level guide shows how to pick a first book.
  • Signs, menus and messages on a trip. You need a few dozen practical words, not a character count. Learn 出口 (deguchi, exit), 入口 (iriguchi, entrance) and 駅 (eki, station) as words.
  • Manga and children’s books with full furigana. The readings are printed, so grammar and casual vocabulary limit you more than kanji. Knowing common characters still makes the page faster to read.
  • Novels, newspapers and work documents without furigana. Here the jōyō list becomes the real benchmark, plus names and field-specific terms outside it.

How to work toward your target

Course sizes vary a lot. Kanji Look and Learn covers 512 kanji that its publisher maps to JLPT N5 through N3 (Japan Times Publishing). WaniKani says you will learn “over 2,000 kanji” (official site). The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course has 2,300 kanji entries (official course site).

A larger course is not automatically better. Choose by the goal above and by the format you will keep using. The kanji apps and methods shortlist compares a managed sequence, handwriting practice, book methods and a reading-first route. If kanji is not your goal yet, a reading habit with furigana and a dictionary can carry you a long way first.

Limits of any kanji number

A character count says nothing about grammar, vocabulary, reading speed or listening. Two learners who know the same 500 characters can read very different amounts, depending on how many words they know. Counts also differ between sources: one course may count a character as learned after a meaning, another only after several readings.

Next step: open one NHK News Web Easy article and read it with the furigana. Note the kanji words you met twice, and learn those words with their readings. Repeat this for a week before you decide whether you need a separate kanji course.

Sources

Prepared by our editorial team with AI assistance. Product details are checked against the sources below.

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