Kanji Grade Lookup
Look up any kanji's school grade, Jōyō or Jinmeiyō status and readings, or find the grade a Japanese text needs.
Kanji Grade Lookup
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Every kanji of one grade
This page uses the KANJIDIC dictionary file. It is the property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, and is used in conformance with the Group's licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). Data version 2026-286, created 13 Oct 2026. Everything runs in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere.
How to use the kanji grade lookup
One character, a name or a whole passage. For a passage, the page counts every kanji and shows the school grade by which a reader has met all of them, and what share each grade covers.
Every distinct kanji gets its official list — elementary grade 1 to 6, the rest of the Jōyō list, the Jinmeiyō list for names, or neither — with strokes, on and kun readings, name readings, meanings and its rank in newspaper frequency.
Pick a grade to see every kanji taught in it, most frequent first or by stroke count. Tap one to look it up.
There are no official kanji lists for today's N1–N5 levels. The page shows the level from the pre-2010 four-level test, labelled as such, and nothing more.
The three official kanji lists, and the one that does not exist
Japan does not limit which kanji may be written, but three government lists decide which ones a reader is expected to know and which ones may appear in a child's name. This page tells you which list a character is on, and — for a whole passage — how far through school a reader has to be before every kanji in it has been taught.
Kyōiku kanji: what elementary school teaches, grade by grade
The Course of Study allocates 1,026 kanji across the six years of elementary school: 80 in the first year, 160 in the second, then 200, 202, 193 and 191. The current table is the one MEXT published in March 2017, in force from 1 April 2020, though under transitional rules schools taught it from the 2018 school year, starting with fourth-year pupils. It added twenty kanji used in prefecture names — 茨, 岡, 崎, 阪, 奈 and fifteen more — to the fourth year, and every kanji in the 47 prefecture names is now taught in elementary school. The same revision moved 37 kanji already on the table to a different year: 32 to a later year and five (賀, 群, 徳, 富 and 城, all used in prefecture names) earlier, into the fourth year. So the fourth year took in 25 kanji and lost 23, and grew only from 200 to 202. The table before it held 1,006.
Jōyō kanji: the general-use list
The 常用漢字表, issued as a Cabinet notice in 2010, is the guide to kanji use in everyday writing — in its own words, a 目安 for writing modern Japanese in general social life. It holds 2,136 kanji: the 1,026 taught in elementary school and 1,110 more that secondary school completes. The 2010 revision added 196 characters to the 1981 list, among them 鬱 (29 strokes by KANJIDIC2's count, more than any other Jōyō kanji; the table itself gives no stroke counts), and removed five: 勺, 錘, 銑, 脹 and 匁. KANJIDIC2 records all five as name kanji.
The table also accepts some forms it does not print. It prints 𠮟 for "scold" but says 叱 can be treated as the same character, and it allows the forms built into devices, such as 頬 and 剥, in place of the printed 頰 and 剝. This page counts 叱, 頬, 剥 and 填 (for 塡) as the Jōyō kanji they stand for, and says so on each card.
Jinmeiyō kanji: allowed in names
A child's given name may use Jōyō kanji and the 人名用漢字, the characters for use in names. Their list is a table in a Ministry of Justice ordinance, 別表第三 of the 戸籍法施行規則, and the office registering a name applies the current one. Its main part holds 652 kanji by our count of the Ministry's table, the newest being 勒, added on 26 June 2026. KANJIDIC2 records 212 more that are older or variant forms of a Jōyō kanji, such as 龍 beside 竜, for 864 in all.
No official kanji lists are available for the new levels. — KANJIDIC2, the file's own definition of its jlpt field, on the levels introduced in 2010
What about the JLPT?
The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test has not published a kanji list since it moved to five levels in 2010. Lists sold as "N5 kanji" are someone's estimate. KANJIDIC2 still records the level each kanji had in the old four-level test, and this page shows that — labelled as the old test — rather than inventing a mapping onto N1–N5.
Reading Japanese in Singapore and Malaysia
For learners here, many of whom already read Chinese, the grade lists are a quicker guide than a textbook's order: a character's grade says how early Japanese readers meet it, and the Jōyō boundary says whether it is on the list for everyday writing at all.
The prefecture kanji added to grade 4, the five that left the Jōyō list, and the JLPT list that was never published
Elementary school teaches 1,026 kanji: 80, 160, 200, 202, 193 and 191 in grades one to six.
The 2020 table added twenty kanji used in prefecture names, including 茨, 媛, 栃, 埼 and 阜, all to grade 4. It also moved 37 others: 32 to a later year and five earlier.
The Jōyō list has 2,136 kanji. The 2010 revision added 196 to the 1981 list and removed five.
KANJIDIC2 records the five removed in 2010 (勺, 錘, 銑, 脹 and 匁) as kanji allowed in names.
鬱, added in 2010, has 29 strokes by KANJIDIC2's count, more than any other Jōyō kanji. The table itself gives no stroke counts.
The Jōyō table prints "scold" as 𠮟, a character outside Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane, and says the everyday 叱 can be treated as the same character. This page counts 叱 as Jōyō.
The name-kanji list now holds 864 kanji beyond the Jōyō list. The newest, 勒, was added on 26 June 2026; 212 of the 864 are variant forms of a Jōyō kanji, such as 龍 for 竜 (counted from KANJIDIC2; the Ministry of Justice's table is the authority).
日 is the most frequent kanji in the newspaper frequency count KANJIDIC2 records.
There have been no official JLPT kanji lists since the test moved to five levels in 2010.
EDRDG's licence requires a web dictionary to update its data at least once a month, so this page rebuilds its copy every week.
Frequently asked questions
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Grades 1 to 6 are the elementary-school years in which a kyōiku kanji is taught. "Jōyō — secondary school" is the rest of the 2,136-character Jōyō list. "Jinmeiyō" kanji are allowed in names but are not Jōyō. "Not on the Jōyō or Jinmeiyō list" means neither.
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It counts every kanji in the text, repeats included, and shows what share a reader has been taught by the end of each elementary grade and by the end of the Jōyō list. "Up to grade 3" means every kanji in the text is taught by the end of the third year.
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No. There are no official kanji lists for the N1–N5 levels used since 2010. The page shows the level each kanji had in the old four-level test, labelled "old JLPT", because that is the only official level that exists.
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In effect, yes. The 2010 table prints the form 𠮟, a separate Unicode character, but its notes say 𠮟 and 叱 can be treated as the same character. It also allows the forms built into devices in place of the ones it prints, naming 頬 for 頰 and 剥 for 剝. The page counts 叱, 頬, 剥 and 填 (for 塡) as the Jōyō kanji they stand for, and says so on each card.
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In Japan, a given name may use Jōyō and Jinmeiyō kanji. The page shows which list a character is on as of the data version printed at the foot of the tool; the Ministry of Justice's current list is the authority when registering a name.
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KANJIDIC2 ranks about 2,500 kanji by how often they appear in Japanese newspapers; 1 is the most frequent (日). Kanji outside that count show no rank.
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That is how KANJIDIC2 marks okurigana, the kana written after the kanji: しか.る is 𠮟る, read shikaru. A reading starting with a dash attaches to something before it, and one ending in a dash to something after it.
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From KANJIDIC2, maintained by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group. Its licence requires a web dictionary to update at least monthly; this page rebuilds its copy every week and prints the version it is using.
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The page loads the roughly 3,100 kanji most people meet first. The other 10,000 or so are loaded only when you type one.
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No. The kanji data is downloaded to your browser and everything is worked out there.
Method & sources
How it computes
Grades, readings, meanings, strokes and frequency are KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0), rebuilt weekly by `php artisan kanjidic:refresh`, which refuses a copy whose grade counts differ from the official lists (1,026 kyōiku by grade; 2,136 Jōyō). A text's profile counts every kanji occurrence against those grades.
What this tool implements
- Every grade, reading and meaning is KANJIDIC2's, with one exception: 勒, which the Ministry of Justice added to the name kanji on 26 June 2026 and KANJIDIC2 does not yet grade, is given grade 9 by an override every rebuild applies (config/kanjidic.php), named in the data's own notice, and refused if KANJIDIC2 later gives it a different grade. The weekly rebuild fails closed: a download, parse or count failure writes nothing and the previous copy keeps serving, and a change to the government lists (1,026 kyōiku kanji at 80/160/200/202/193/191; 2,136 Jōyō) stops the refresh for a person to check the page's prose.
- Jōyō membership follows the 2010 常用漢字表's own notes, not only the forms it prints: it says 𠮟 and 叱 can be treated as the same character, and it allows the forms built into devices (頬 and 剥 for 頰 and 剝, and 填 for 塡 by the same note), so the page counts those four as the Jōyō kanji they stand for and says so on each card. These four and the 勒 grade are the only hand-entered rules.
- A variant note runs one way only, from a form to a kanji that stands higher on the lists. A Jōyō kanji is never called "a variant of" its own Jinmeiyō old form (横 and 橫); the old form is shown as allowed in names instead.
- Every one of the 1,026 grades and every one of the 2,136 Jōyō kanji is checked against MEXT's own tables, parsed from its PDFs independently of KANJIDIC2: zero differences. The 2020 changes the page states (20 kanji added to grade 4; 37 moved, 32 to a later year and 5 earlier; grade 4 from 200 to 202) are computed from MEXT's 2017 and 2008 tables in the same test.
- EDRDG's licence is met on the page as well as in the files: the acknowledgement it requires appears on the tool's screen with links to the licence and the KANJIDIC project, together with the version being served; the data is refreshed at least monthly (weekly, with a daily age check that reaches the operations digest); and fields owned by other rights holders (dictionary references, SKIP and Four Corner codes, Korean and Pinyin readings, non-English meanings) are dropped at build time.
- ⚠️ JLPT: KANJIDIC2's own definition says the JLPT levels changed in 2010 and that no official kanji lists exist for the new N1-N5 levels. The page shows only the former four-level value, labelled as such, and never maps it onto N-levels.
Sources
- KANJIDIC2, Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/KANJIDIC_Project — licence and its conditions: https://www.edrdg.org/edrdg/licence.html
- 常用漢字表 (平成22年内閣告示第2号, 2010), Agency for Cultural Affairs: https://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/sisaku/joho/joho/kijun/nai… — its notes that 「「𠮟」と「叱」は本来別字とされるが，その使用実態から見て，異体の関係にある同字と認めることができる」 and that device forms such as 「頬・賭・剥」 for 「頰・賭・剝」 may be used.
- 文化審議会答申「改定常用漢字表」(2010-06-07), which records the 196 characters added and the five removed: https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkashingikai/sokai/sokai_10/pdf…
- 文部科学省, 小学校学習指導要領 (平成29年文部科学省告示第63号, in force 1 April 2020), 学年別漢字配当表, set against the 2008 table in MEXT's 比較対照表: https://www.mext.go.jp/content/1384661_4_1_1.pdf — and MEXT's Q&A on the revision, which records the 25 prefecture-name kanji assigned to grade 4 (20 of them new to the table), the 32 moved between grades 4, 5 and 6, and the transitional teaching from 2018: https://www.mext.go.jp/content/1422304_001.pdf
- 法務省, 戸籍法施行規則 別表第三 — the table of kanji for names, and the rule that Jōyō and name kanji may both be used in a child's name: https://www.moj.go.jp/MINJI/minji86.html (table: https://www.moj.go.jp/content/001465737.pdf). Its first part prints 652 kanji, 勒 among them (our count, 2 October 2026); the 212 variant forms in its second part are drawn as large images and are counted from KANJIDIC2. This table is the authority.
- Kyodo News, 「「勒」を人名用漢字に追加 法務省、戸籍法規則改正」, 26 June 2026 — 「法務省は26日、戸籍法施行規則を改正し、人名用漢字に「勒」の1文字を追加した。」: https://www.nippon.com/ja/news/kd1443021068951159203/
What can make this go out of date
- KANJIDIC2 from https://www.edrdg.org/pub/Nihongo/kanjidic2.xml.gz, fetched weekly on the server by `kanjidic:refresh` (never by the reader). A committed copy ships with the code, so the page works if the refresh has not run. Nothing the reader types is transmitted.
Abridged — the full review record for this tool runs longer than the list above.
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