The Joyo Kanji: What the 2,136 Official Characters Are

鬱, the 29-stroke kanji in 憂鬱 (ゆううつ, gloom), is on Japan's official list of kanji for everyday use. 嘘 (うそ, lie), a word people use every day, isn't. That tells you something about what the joyo list is. It was never meant as a ranking of the most common characters. It's a government guideline for which kanji can be used in public writing without a reading aid.

The list is called the 常用漢字表 (じょうようかんじひょう), usually translated as "kanji for regular use". It currently has 2,136 characters, and it's the number people mean when they say you need about 2,000 kanji to read Japanese.

What the list is for

The joyo list is issued by the Japanese government as a standard for laws, official documents, newspapers, magazines and broadcasting. It isn't a law that binds anyone else. Novelists, scientists and ordinary people can write whatever kanji they like, and they do.

In practice it sets the line for furigana. A newspaper will print a joyo kanji bare and expect you to read it. A character outside the list usually gets small kana beside it, or the word is rewritten. You'll sometimes see half-kana spellings like 改ざん (かいざん, falsification) in the news, because the second kanji, 竄, isn't on the list.

For each character, the list also gives the readings that count as standard, more than 4,000 across the whole list. A reading that isn't listed is treated like a kanji that isn't listed. There's an appendix of whole words with special readings that can't be split by character, such as 今日 (きょう, today), 大人 (おとな, adult) and 一人 (ひとり, one person). If the difference between the two kinds of reading is new to you, our post on on'yomi and kun'yomi explains it.

From 1,850 to 2,136

The list has had three versions.

• 1946. The 当用漢字 (とうようかんじ, toyo kanji) list, with 1,850 characters. It was written as a limit, part of a postwar push to simplify the written language, and simplified forms for many characters followed in 1949.
• 1981. The joyo list replaced it with 1,945 characters and a softer purpose. It became a guideline instead of a restriction.
• 2010. The revision that produced today's list. 196 characters were added and 5 removed, for a total of 2,136.

What changed in 2010

The reasoning behind the 2010 revision was that computers and phones had changed how people use kanji. You no longer need to be able to write 鬱 by hand to use it. You type うつ and pick it from a menu. So the committee added characters that people could read and were typing all the time, even difficult ones.

Some of the additions are surprising, because it's hard to believe they weren't already there:

• 誰 (だれ, who) and 俺 (おれ, a casual male "I")
• 頃 (ころ, around the time of) and 謎 (なぞ, mystery)
• 丼 (どんぶり, rice bowl), 麺 (めん, noodles), 鍋 (なべ, pot) and 箸 (はし, chopsticks)
• 挨 and 拶, which exist almost entirely for the word 挨拶 (あいさつ, greeting)
• Eleven kanji used in prefecture names, including 阪 in 大阪 (おおさか), 岡 in 福岡 (ふくおか) and 熊 in 熊本 (くまもと)

The five that were dropped were rarely used: 勺 and 匁 (old units of measure), 錘 (spindle), 銑 (pig iron) and 脹 (to swell).

The 1,026 kanji taught in elementary school

Within the joyo list is a smaller set called the 教育漢字 (きょういくかんじ, kyoiku kanji). These are the characters Japanese children learn in the six years of elementary school, and the Ministry of Education assigns each one to a grade. The count went from 1,006 to 1,026 with the curriculum that took effect in 2020, which added 20 kanji used in prefecture names to grade 4 so that fourth graders can write all 47 prefectures.

The other 1,110 joyo kanji come after elementary school, most of them in junior high.

The grade order was designed for children who already speak Japanese, and it shows. Grade 1 includes 糸 (thread), 貝 (shell) and 竹 (bamboo), simple shapes for things a six-year-old knows. Meanwhile 私 (わたし, I) waits until grade 6, and 彼 (かれ, he) isn't taught until junior high. An adult learner wants those in the first month.

Kanji outside the list

Anything not on the joyo list is called 表外漢字 (ひょうがいかんじ, hyogai kanji), literally "kanji outside the table". There are thousands of them and a few hundred turn up regularly. 嘘 (うそ, lie), 噂 (うわさ, rumor) and 鞄 (かばん, bag) are all off the list, though you'll see them in novels, manga and text messages. Many such words are just as often written in kana.

One group of non-joyo characters has official status of its own. The 人名用漢字 (じんめいようかんじ, jinmeiyo kanji) are extra characters approved for use in given names. Parents registering a baby's name can choose from the joyo kanji plus this list, which is kept by the Ministry of Justice and stood at 863 characters after the most recent addition in 2017. It's where popular name kanji like 翔, 蓮 and 凛 come from.

What it means if you're learning Japanese

The joyo list is a reasonable finish line for reading. If you know all 2,136, you can read a newspaper, and nearly every kanji you can't read will have furigana on it. It's also roughly the scale of JLPT N1, though the JLPT doesn't publish a kanji list and the two aren't identical.

It's a poor guide to what order to study in, and you don't need the whole thing to get started. A few joyo kanji are close to useless: 朕 (ちん) is a pronoun only the emperor used, and 璽 (じ) means the imperial seal. The usual explanation for their place on the list is that both appear in the text of the constitution. On the other side, kanji use is heavily weighted toward a small core, so the first several hundred common characters cover far more text than the last several hundred. We go through those numbers in how many kanji you need.

So use joyo status as a filter. If a kanji is on the list, it's fair to expect to meet it bare in print and it's worth learning eventually. If it's not, learn the word in kana first and pick up the kanji when you keep seeing it. For the order, frequency or JLPT level will serve an adult better than school grades. Our post on the best way to learn kanji covers how to set that up.

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