Top: Introduction and Contents >> 4. The Japanese writing system >> 4.2. Kanji (漢字)
TO DO #8: priority: low: Add caution as found on Taishukan website
According to the authoritative Daikanwa Jiten, about 50,000 kanji in total have been created. However, most of these are highly obscure, for instance many refer to specific place names or names of insects or plants, and most are not widely used even in China.The Japanese government's official list of recommended characters, the Jouyou kanji (常用漢字), consists of 1945 characters (the list can be found in any dictionary or advanced textbook ), together with their approved readings, plus another set of called the kanjikanjiJinmeiyou kanji (jinmeiyou (人名用) literally means `people name use') which are extra characters that are permitted to be used in making given names. Characters outside the jinmeiyou plus jouyou sets cannot be used for making people's names. The Jouyou set of characters is the basis for newspapers to use, with a legal requirement that any characters outside this set must have accompanying furigana (see 4.3.3. What is furigana? ). However, modern written Japanese uses a larger number of characters. These characters do not necessarily have to be accompanied by furigana. It is believed that knowledge of about 3,300 characters is needed in order to be a literate Japanese adult. Many specialised fields, for instance medicine, use larger sets of characters, and place names often use obscure characters, making the set of total characters in use in Japan about six thousand.
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