School in Japan · Kanji
Kanji by grade
Japanese children learn 1,026 kanji in six years of elementary school, set grade by grade in the national curriculum. These are the kyōiku kanji (education kanji), and they are where most learners of Japanese start too.
The six grades
- Grade 1 kanji 80 kanji 一人十二九入力八七大三上… 80 in total by the end of the year See the list →
- Grade 2 kanji 160 kanji 刀工万丸才弓分内方今公午… 240 in total by the end of the year See the list →
- Grade 3 kanji 200 kanji 丁化区予反代主平世打由仕… 440 in total by the end of the year See the list →
- Grade 4 kanji 202 kanji 氏不夫井欠民以加必付辺失… 642 in total by the end of the year See the list →
- Grade 5 kanji 193 kanji 士久支比仏示可史旧弁圧永… 835 in total by the end of the year See the list →
- Grade 6 kanji 191 kanji 亡己干寸収片仁尺処庁幼冊… 1,026 in total by the end of the year See the list →
How kanji are taught
Each grade has a fixed list of new kanji. Children practise them in kanji notebooks with large squares, learning the stroke order and details such as whether a stroke ends with a stop (tome), a flick (hane) or a sweep (harai). Teachers often mark these details strictly.
Kanji homework is daily in most classes, with regular small tests. Children are also expected to use the kanji they have learned in their writing, and to write kanji they have not learned yet in hiragana.
The list was last revised in April 2020. It grew from 1,006 to 1,026 kanji, adding the 20 kanji used in prefecture names, such as 茨 (Ibaraki), 岡 (Okayama) and 縄 (Okinawa), to grade 4.
After elementary school
Junior high school students learn the rest of the 2,136 jōyō kanji (kanji for everyday use), the set expected of adults and used in newspapers. Many children also sit the Kanji Kentei test: levels 10 to 5 match elementary grades 1 to 6.
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Keep learning kanji
Readers, books and study bundles from The Japan Shop.
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The first 103 kanji, with grammar, vocabulary and reading for the JLPT N5.
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Hiragana, katakana and a first kanji book, for starting Japanese from zero.
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Japanese readers about yokai, with furigana and native audio (JLPT N4 level).
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Readings, meanings and stroke counts are from KANJIDIC2 by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. The kanji lists by grade follow the MEXT Course of Study (2020). EDRDG licence · CC BY-SA 4.0