What is Kanji?
Kanji is one of the three types of Japanese alphabets which are used in reading and writing.

Other alphabets are Hiragana and Katakana.
Example
Let’s see how Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji are used in a sentence.
明日友達とバーベキューに行く予定です。
I am going to have a barbecue with friends tomorrow.
- Hiragana in yellow
- Katakana in pink
- Kanji in blue
There are actually ‘roles’ for each alphabet.

Loan nouns are originally from other countries. バーベキュー(ba a be kyu u)in pink above is an example.
Video
You can watch the video below up to 1 minute and 42 seconds to learn about the Japanese writing system including Kanji.
Number of Kanji
There are millions of Kanji characters, so it is impossible to remember all of them even for Japanese people.
As a Japanese learner, it would be great if you could remember very basic 200 Kanji characters. See more details here.
The Japanese government says that Japanese people should be able to use about 2100 Kanji characters by the end of Year 12.
They start to learn Kanji characters in Grade 1 and finish learning about 1000 of them by the end of Grade 6.
Kanji sound system
Each Kanji character has a basic meaning and most of them have two different ways of pronunciation: on-yomi and kun-yomi.
Here are some examples.
Kanji | Meaning | On-yomi | Kun-yomi |
---|---|---|---|
月 | moon | げつ | つき |
火 | fire | か | ひ |
水 | water | すい | みず |
木 | tree | もく | き |
金 | gold | きん | かね |
土 | soil | ど | つち |
日 | sun | にち | ひ |
海 | sea | かい | うみ |
空 | sky | くう | そら |
雨 | rain | う | あめ |