Kanji Chart

The Complete Kanji Chart

This chart lays out 276 essential Japanese kanji across 45 lessons, arranged in the order a learner actually meets them — numbers first, then people and places, time, family, and the adjectives and verbs of everyday speech. Every character here has full stroke data, so each one links to an animated stroke-order guide, its on’yomi and kun’yomi readings, example words, and a printable practice sheet.

How the lessons are ordered

Kanji has no natural grid the way the kana syllabary does — there is no vowel row or consonant column to fall back on. Instead the lessons follow a teaching sequence: Lesson 1 covers the numbers one through ten plus hundred and thousand, Lesson 2 introduces Japan, people, and country, and later lessons build outward into school, work, weather, travel, and the body. Each lesson holds six kanji, small enough to finish in one sitting.

Why only these kanji

Japanese uses a couple of thousand kanji in everyday print, but this chart deliberately shows 276. Every character on it has been traced stroke by stroke, which is what makes the animated guides, the handwriting practice, and the printable sheets possible. A chart of two thousand characters would be a wall of glyphs you could look at but not practice. The rest of the catalog is a search away in the Kanji Library.

Keep going

Search the full catalog in the Kanji Library, drill themed groups from memory with recall sets, see the kana equivalent on the hiragana and katakana chart, or put these characters to work in grammar lessons.