This is a web-based tool to help beginner and intermediate level Japanese language learners to read and write kanji. It is free, but there are certain system requirements necessary to use it.

• You can search from a total of 1235 kanji.
• You can search via onyomi (on-reading), kunyomi (kun-reading), English kanji meaning(s), radical name, radical stroke number, radical English meaning(s) and kanji stroke number and so on.
• For kanji, you can choose from 4 different fonts, including the textbook font.
• For each kanji you can listen to example of usage read by male and female voices, to hear the correct pronunciation for the onyomi and kunyomi.
• You can watch animations showing how the kanji came about.
• There are mnemonic hints which relate the kanji's components to the kanji's meaning.

How to...

First, click on Kanji alive (http://app.kanjialive.com).

Here is a search screen.

In Quick Search, you can search by kanji, kunyomi reading (by entering hiragana), onyomi reading (by entering katakana), but you can only input Japanese.
To search using romaji, please use the Advanced Search.
You can also search using the English meaning.

We searched for “tree.”

From the results, let’s look at the kanji“木”.

For your selected kanji, you can see a stroke-order animation (1), the kanji radical and an animation showing its origins (2), a mnemonic hint (3) which relates the kanji's components to the kanji's meaning, examples of use with audio and English translations (4) and the meaning in English, the number of strokes. Also, you can find out some other detailed information, such as the year at which the kanji is taught in Japanese elementary schools and so on.

Before using, by looking at the User Guide, you can learn about how to use the site in detail.

The System Requirements necessary to use the site are written on-site, so please check them.