Japanese Numbers in Kanji: How to Read Them From 1 to 100 Million

Most people's first kanji are numbers. 一, 二 and 三 are one, two and three lines, which is about as friendly as kanji ever gets. Then you hit 万, find out Japanese doesn't count in thousands the way English does, and things get more interesting.

Below you'll find the ten basic characters, the readings that shift depending on what you're counting, how big numbers get built, and the old versions still printed on yen notes. We also cover where kanji numerals actually show up in Japan, because it isn't where most beginners expect.

The ten kanji you need

Every Japanese number is built from these. The first reading in each row came over from Chinese, and it's the one you'll use for counting, prices and math. The second is the native Japanese reading, which you'll mostly hear when counting objects (more on that further down).

Zero has a kanji too, 零 (れい, rei), but in conversation most people just say ゼロ. In vertical text you'll often see a small circle, 〇, used as a zero digit, especially in years like 二〇二六.

Why 4, 7 and 9 have two readings

The Chinese reading of 四 is し (shi), which sounds exactly like 死, the kanji for death. 九 can be read く (ku), which sounds like 苦, meaning suffering. Nobody wants to say those in a hospital, so in everyday counting people switch to よん (yon) for 4 and きゅう (kyuu) for 9. 七 gets swapped from しち (shichi) to なな (nana) mostly because しち is easy to mishear as いち.

The catch is that some words froze with the old readings, and you just have to learn them:

• 四月 (しがつ, shigatsu) is April, not よんがつ.
• 四時 (よじ, yoji) is 4 o'clock. Not よんじ, and not しじ either.
• 七月 (しちがつ, shichigatsu) is July.
• 九時 (くじ, kuji) is 9 o'clock, and 九月 (くがつ, kugatsu) is September.

Counting up from one, you'll hear both versions. Counting down from ten, people almost always say きゅう, はち, なな, ろく, ご, よん. If you're not sure, go with よん, なな and きゅう and you'll be understood everywhere.

11 to 99 is just math

Once you know one to ten, you can already write every number up to 99. Japanese builds them the way you'd say them in slow, very literal English. 十一 is ten-one, so 11. 二十 is two-ten, so 20. 二十三 is two-ten-three, which makes 23.

• 十五 (じゅうご, juugo) = 15
• 三十 (さんじゅう, sanjuu) = 30
• 四十二 (よんじゅうに, yonjuuni) = 42
• 九十九 (きゅうじゅうきゅう, kyuujuukyuu) = 99

One small thing trips people up. You never write 一十 for ten, it's just 十. Same for 100 (百, not 一百) and usually 1,000 (千). The 一 only becomes required once you get to 万.

Big numbers come in groups of four

This is where Japanese really stops matching English. English groups big numbers in threes: thousand, million, billion. Japanese groups them in fours. After 千 (1,000) comes 万 (まん, man), which means 10,000, and everything above that is counted in 万 until you reach 億.

So a million is 百万, literally a hundred ten-thousands. A salary of 5,000,000 yen is 五百万円, or "five hundred man yen." It feels backwards for a while. The trick that helped us most is to ignore the commas and count four digits in from the right. Whatever sits to the left of that point is your 万 number.

Try it with 1,234,567. Split it as 123 | 4567. The left part is 百二十三, so you get 百二十三万. The right part is 四千五百六十七. Put them together and you have 百二十三万四千五百六十七.

Sound changes to watch for

A few combinations change their pronunciation so they're easier to say. The kanji stay the same, only the reading shifts. These are the ones worth memorizing:

Every other hundred and thousand is regular. 二百 is にひゃく, 五千 is ごせん, and so on.

The native readings: ひとつ, ふたつ, みっつ

The last column in the first table is the old Japanese way of counting, from before Chinese numbers arrived. It only goes up to ten, and today you mostly hear it when counting things that don't have a specific counter word. At a café, コーヒーをふたつください means "two coffees, please."

These readings also hide inside some very common words, which is why you'll see 一 or 二 read in ways that don't match the chart:

• 一人 (ひとり, hitori) is one person, and 二人 (ふたり, futari) is two. From three on it switches back, so 三人 is さんにん.
• 一日 (ついたち, tsuitachi) is the first day of the month. The same kanji read いちにち means "one day."
• 二十日 (はつか, hatsuka) is the 20th of the month.
• 二十歳 (はたち, hatachi) means 20 years old, the age you can legally drink in Japan.

There's no rule that predicts these. You learn them one at a time, and they stick faster than you'd think because you see them so often.

The formal numbers on your yen notes

Take out a 10,000 yen note and look closely. It doesn't say 一万円. It says 壱万円. That 壱 is a daiji (大字), a formal version of a number used on money, contracts and legal documents.

The reason is fraud. 一 is a single stroke, so it's trivial to add a line and turn it into 二, or a cross and make it 十. Daiji are complicated enough that nobody can quietly edit them. Only a few are still in regular use:

• 壱 for 一 (1)
• 弐 for 二 (2)
• 参 for 三 (3)
• 拾 for 十 (10)

You'll see 弐千円 on the 2,000 yen note and 壱万円 on the 10,000. Outside of banks, official paperwork and wedding gift envelopes (the amount inside is traditionally written in daiji), you probably won't ever need to write them yourself.

Where you'll actually see kanji numbers

Something nobody tells beginners: in modern Japan, most numbers are written with the same 1, 2, 3 you already use. Prices, phone numbers, train times and receipts almost all use Arabic numerals. So why bother with the kanji?

• Vertical text. Novels, newspapers and a lot of manga run top to bottom, and numbers written vertically are usually kanji.
• Everyday words. Plenty of common vocabulary contains number kanji where the number isn't really the point: 一緒 (いっしょ, together), 一番 (いちばん, the most), 十分 (じゅうぶん, enough), 万一 (まんいち, just in case).
• Dates and years. Month names are literally numbers. 一月 is January and 十二月 is December. Formal documents also use Japanese era years, like 令和八年 for 2026.
• Restaurants and shops. Traditional places, especially izakayas and ramen shops with handwritten menus, often write prices in kanji.
• Names and places. 三浦, 九州, 八王子, 千葉. Numbers turn up in family names and place names all over the country.

So you'll run into 一 through 十 constantly. It's just usually as part of a word rather than as a number on its own.

How to actually learn them

The ten basic kanji take an afternoon. Honestly, 一, 二 and 三 take about ten seconds. What takes longer is reading big numbers without stopping to count digits, and remembering the handful of irregular readings.

• Read prices out loud. Whenever you see a price, say it in Japanese in your head. 1,980円 is せんきゅうひゃくはちじゅうえん. Do that for a few weeks and 万 starts to feel normal.
• Learn the words, not just the numbers. 一人, 一日, 四月 and 九時 are worth reviewing as whole words, since that's where the irregular readings live.
• Use spaced repetition. Short reviews spread over several days beat one long session. The readings you get wrong come back sooner, and the easy ones get out of your way.
• Move on to counters next. Japanese uses different counting words for flat things, long things, people, animals and more. They're the natural next step once numbers feel easy.

Common questions

If you're just starting out, our JLPT N5 kanji guide covers the rest of the beginner set, and the best way to learn kanji explains how to fit it all into a routine that actually lasts.