FURTHER RESOURCES

It's difficult to know which kanji will appear on the JLPT tests of kanji knowledge because the people who make the exams don't want you to know beforehand! By contrast, the creators of the Kanken test are transparent about which kanji will be tested at each level.

Wolfgang Hadamitzky, co-creator of the wonderful resource known as The Kanji Dictionary, has compiled lists of the kanji that are likely to be on the various JLPT tests and that are definitely on each level of the Kanken. What's more, he has made these lists available for free on his website.

How confident can one be about the accuracy of the JLPT list? Well, on the one hand he writes in his PDF, "Nobody can know for sure which and how many kanji will be tested in the various levels nowadays." On the other hand the German JLPT test center in Düsseldorf has linked its site to his kanji lists!

If you have a Joy o' Kanji account, you will find that your account file contains two free PDFs with the test information, alongside any free and purchased Joy o' Kanji essays. (For more on where that account file is, go to the FAQ and see section 19.) The test-related PDFs are called JLPTKanjiList.pdf and KankenKanjiList.pdf.

Alternatively, you can download the PDFs from Hadamitzky's site.

In 2010, when the powers that be issued the Shin-Joyo list (that is, the list of hundreds of characters added to the Joyo list, as well as the five removed from it), that added another level of uncertainty. I've never been clear on whether all the new kanji would be in the N1 level of the JLPT test, but I assumed so—until now. Hadamitzky has designated an "N+" category containing 163 Joyo kanji that are not on any of the JLPT tests. That means that of the 196 Shin-Joyo kanji, only 33 have been added to the JLPT test!

This has implications for Joy o' Kanji. For each Joyo kanji, I indicate the JLPT level in two places: on every Character Home Page and on the first page of each essay. For all Shin-Joyo, I have either written that the level is unknown at this time or listed N1 as the level. (An assistant came up with those designations in 2010 after consulting data from three sources.) I have randomly checked the Joy o' Kanji information about five Shin-Joyo kanji against Hadamitzky's information and ... good news! We say the same thing in four cases! The one conflict occurred with 瓦 (roof tile; gram; "tile" radical), which Joy o' Kanji has as N1 whereas Hadamitzky has it as N+. In the case of such conflicts, it's probably best to go with his list, but he told me in an email that some of the N+ kanji may have made their way onto the tests by now.

In the end it's all guesswork!

Jim Breen’s Japanese Page. This online dictionary supplies comprehensive information about characters, words, and much more, including oodles of sample sentences. In fact, Joy o' Kanji includes significant material from Jim Breen's JMdict (EDICT, etc.) dictionary files and uses that material in accordance with the license provisions of the Electronic Dictionaries Research Group. See http://www.edrdg.org/jmdict/edict.html and http://www.edrdg.org. 

Denshi Jisho. This online dictionary is extremely convenient when you need to look up characters and don't know their readings. For some fun ways to use this resource, see Radical Terms (Does the Radical Matter?).

Mihongo. I'm a big fan of this visual dictionary, which enthralls me so much that I blogged about it right after discovering its existence. Through photos and drawings of unusual items, the dictionary offers an extremely helpful way of grasping terms specific to Japan, particularly those from the traditional culture.

Wiktionary. Written entirely in Japanese, this online dictionary indicates Joyo and non-Joyo yomi. It also classifies the on-yomi in terms of the era in which they originated in China.

A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Kenneth G. Henshall (Tuttle, 1998). That's the title of the original edition, which provides an in-depth look at the etymology of Joyo characters, exploring how the meanings and shapes of kanji have changed over time. In 2016, Henshall and two colleagues published a newer edition, called The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji: Remembering and Understanding the 2,136 Standard Characters. This work provides etymologies for the expanded Joyo set. I much prefer the earlier edition for reasons I listed in the February 2019 newsletter. In short: (1) visual readability has gone way down; and (2) the tone used to be friendly, and the writing felt accessible, but the new approach is scholarly, and sentences seem overly concise and harder to follow. The earlier etymologies have changed, as have the kanji numbers. I really don't enjoy the newer edition, but it appears that the etymologies are more accurate, as the authors have drawn on different information. I therefore think it's worthwhile to own both volumes.

Basic Kanji Book, Vols. 1 and 2, by Chieko Kano and others (Bonjinsha, 1989). These orderly, well-thought-out books filled me with a sense of clarity and confidence about 500 kanji. If you're making a first foray into the world of kanji, I strongly recommend these textbooks. The sequel, Intermediate Kanji Book, is as confusing as the most labyrinthine bureaucracy imaginable. Avoid it.

The Study of Kanji by Michael Pye (Hokuseido, 1971). Pye focuses on what I've called on-echoes and maps out the series of characters in which one finds such echoes. Unfortunately, this out-of-print book is hard to find.

Kanji Pict-o-Graphix: Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics by Michael Rowley (Stone Bridge Press, 1992). When I reviewed this book for Kanji Clinic, I explained that, for me, Rowley's visual mnemonics are secondary to his fascinating component analysis.

Building Word Power in Japanese: Using Prefixes and Suffixes by Timothy J. Vance (Kodansha, 1990). Extremely useful guide to the specific meanings characters can have when serving as prefixes or suffixes in compounds.