This is an online kanji dictionary that includes the readings, radicals, number of strokes, compound words and more for 6355 kanji characters. As there are lots of different ways to search the entries, it's pretty convenient. You can also look up obscure/difficult kanji, kanji used in people's names and so on.

• You can look up kanji via their reading, their radical reading or the number of strokes in the radical.
• There is a chart showing all the jouyou (common use) kanji.
• You can look up difficult to read/obscure (nandoku) kanji.
• There is a chart for jinmeiyou kanji (those officially for use in people's names).
• As well as the reading for the kanji you look up, some vocabulary words that use that character are introduced too.
• The screen display is Japanese-only.

How to...

These are the contents:

Let's take a look at the main kanji dictionary (漢字辞典).

There are 3 basic ways you can look up kanji:
'Look up via (on-/kun-) reading (読み方[音読み、訓読み]から探す)',
'Look up via radical-stroke number (部首の画数から探す)', or
'Look up via radical-reading (部首の読み方から探す)'.

We tried clicking on the 'あ' line in the '読み方から探す (Look up via reading)' section.

This means the first hiragana character in the reading is 'あ'.
If there is no second character in the reading, click on '二文字目なし (No second character)', found next to '読み方二文字目 (Reading of second character)'.
If there is a second hiragana character to the reading, and you know what it is, click on the corresponding hiragana from the list.

Notation-wise, a katakana 'ア' means that it's the on-yomi,
while a hiragana 'あ' means that it's the kun-yomi.

We tried clicking on the kanji '亜'.
We can find out various information, such as how it is read, the number of strokes, words that use it and so on.
As well as this, you can see Jouyou information (i.e. if/when the kanji is learned in school),
at what level the kanji appears in the kanji kentei test and more.

If you want to look up a kanji by its radical, you can either search via the reading (部首の読み方から探す), or by the number of strokes (部首の画数から探す).

Let's look at the 'Nandoku (Obscure) kanji (難読漢字)'.

There are options to 'View by Japanese syllabary order (五十音順に見る)', or 'View by category (カテゴリ別に見る)'.
There are 11 categories to choose from, including plants (植物), fish (魚類), birds (鳥類), country names (国名) and more.
The 'View by category (カテゴリ別に見る)' option can be found at the very bottom of the Nandoku kanji (難読漢字) page.

Search results for 'さ' entries in the 'Fish' category

This is a chart showing officially approved kanji for use in people's names.
It is colour-coded to show how many kanji have been added to the list over time, and the year in which they were added.

Elsewhere on the site you can also view kokuji (国字), i.e. kanji that were made in Japan (not imported from China), radicals (部首) and more.

Kokuji - kanji originally from Japan

Kanji radicals

There is also a section of new information (新着情報) on kanji.
People who like kanji might find this kind of information is just what they want.

New info on kanji