About

KanjiDB is an interface to the KANJIDIC and EDICT-format datasets compiled by Jim Breen and others and maintained under the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group at Monash University. KanjiDB is intended as a reference and (partial) translation tool for English speakers interested in the Japanese logographic writing system (kanji) based on Chinese hanzi. It is purely mySQL and PHP based, making the software easily distributable.

The site features a detailed list of all kanji in the JIS X 208 and 212 standards, indexed by radical, as well as search functions to locate specific kanji and words and phrases in Japanese.

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今日は

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A Quick Note on Japanese Writing

Japanese is written in three distinct alphabets. The kana, hiragana (平仮名) and katakana (片仮名), are separate syllabic alphabets, where each character stands for a distinct syllable and words are spelt out based on the syllables in their pronunciation. The alphabets are not interchangeable, and there are specific circumstances governing where each is used. It can be helpful to think of these as similar to spelling out English words in the roman alphabet, although the spelling rules are a good deal simpler. Then there is kanji (漢字), which is the logographic alphabet based on Chinese characters. In kanji, each character stands for (very loosely) an idea or word, and words are spelt out either with a single kanji that represents that word, or through compounds of multiple kanji which are (generally) semantically related to the word. It should be noted that the kanji characters are not pictographic, meaning that they do not necessarily visually represent the idea they stand for (though some do). Technically, romaji ( ローマ字 - roman letters), constitutes a fourth Japanese alphabet, since writing Japanese words using the roman alphabet has been common since the post-war period. However, if you can read this sentence it is assumed you do not need to be familiarized with this alphabet.

• Katakana is marked by mostly straight strokes and sharp corners. It is most commonly encountered in gairaigo (外来語), words adapted from foreign languages. Some simple kanji may occasionally be mistaken for katakana characters, and vice versa.
  • Examples: ベースボール - baseball, オールボアール - au revoir, ジョンスミス - John Smith.
• Hiragana is a more curved script. It is used alongside kanji to write standard Japanese words, and may be written above kanji which the reader is not expected to know how to pronounce.
  • Examples: またね - (Expression) Goodbye, See you later, おはよう - Good morning (less polite form). Note that it is generally written as お早う or 御早う although the pronunciation is the same for all three.
• Kanji is mostly more visually complex then either of the kana syllabaries. Kanji may have different meanings and pronuciations depending on the context. There may be as many as 80 000 distinct kanji characters, although less than 6000 are in common use in modern Japanese, and a person can be considered literate knowing roughly 2000.
  • Examples: 息子 (むすこ) - son, and 双子 (ふたご) - twins. In each case, the character 子 (child) is pronounced differently.

Japanese may be written horizontally, where text is read left to right and then top to bottom, just like in English. It may also be written vertically, where it is read top to bottom and then right to left. You will not encounter vertical Japanese text on this site.

A pronunciation table for hiragana and katakana is available here (PDF, 128K). All kana appearing on this website will display their romanized pronunciation if you mouse over them in a recent browser. Clicking on any kanji character will bring you to a page with more details on it.