The JLPT N5 kanji come to around a hundred characters, the most frequent and the simplest in Japanese. This is your first serious contact with the Chinese characters of the written language, and it is also where a lot of beginners panic. There is no need to: this N5 kanji list sorts into a few large, logical groups, and learning to group them makes the whole thing far easier to swallow.
One thing to know straight away: there is no official kanji list published by the JLPT organizers since the 2010 overhaul. The hundred or so characters people talk about are a consensus drawn from preparation lists. The exact count varies a little (roughly 80 to 103 depending on the source), but the core is stable, and the core is what counts.
数Numbers
You always start here: the numbers are everywhere, in prices, dates and counters. They are also the simplest to write.
- 一 · ichi · one
- 二 · ni · two
- 三 · san · three
- 四 · shi, yon · four
- 五 · go · five
- 六 · roku · six
- 七 · shichi, nana · seven
- 八 · hachi · eight
- 九 · kyū, ku · nine
- 十 · jū · ten
- 百 · hyaku · hundred
- 千 · sen · thousand
- 万 · man · ten thousand
- 円 · en · yen, circle
時Time and the calendar
Once the numbers are in place, the calendar follows naturally: the days, the months and the parts of the day are built from the numbers.
- 日 · day, sun
- 月 · moon, month
- 火 · fire (and Tuesday)
- 水 · water (and Wednesday)
- 木 · tree (and Thursday)
- 金 · gold, money (and Friday)
- 土 · earth (and Saturday)
- 年 · year
- 時 · hour, time
- 間 · interval, between
- 週 · week
- 今 · now
- 半 · half
- 毎 · every
- 午 · noon
毎日日本語を読みます。
mainichi nihongo o yomimasu.
I read Japanese every day.
人People and family
The second most useful group, because you talk about yourself and others very early on.
- 人 · person
- 男 · man
- 女 · woman
- 子 · child
- 父 · father
- 母 · mother
- 友 · friend
- 先 · ahead, previous
- 生 · life, to be born
- 名 · name
友だちの名前は何ですか。
tomodachi no namae wa nan desu ka.
What is your friend’s name?
所Places and directions
For finding your way and moving around: kanji you meet on signs and maps.
- 上 · up, above
- 下 · down, below
- 右 · right
- 左 · left
- 中 · middle, inside
- 外 · outside
- 東 · east
- 西 · west
- 南 · south
- 北 · north
- 国 · country
- 駅 · station
- 店 · shop
- 道 · road, path
- 校 · school (element)
- 社 · company, shrine
自Nature and the elements
Many of these kanji are ancient pictograms: their shape still hints at what they represent, which makes them easy to keep.
- 山 · mountain
- 川 · river
- 天 · sky, heaven
- 気 · air, spirit
- 雨 · rain
- 空 · sky, empty
- 花 · flower
- 魚 · fish
- 白 · white
動Common verbs
These kanji carry the basic actions. You will find them at the heart of the most frequent N5 verbs.
- 行 · to go
- 来 · to come
- 食 · to eat
- 飲 · to drink
- 見 · to see
- 聞 · to listen, to hear
- 言 · to say
- 話 · to speak
- 読 · to read
- 書 · to write
- 買 · to buy
- 出 · to exit, to put out
- 入 · to enter
- 立 · to stand
- 休 · to rest
- 会 · to meet
お茶を飲んで、本を読みます。
ocha o nonde, hon o yomimasu.
I drink tea, then I read a book.
形Adjectives and sizes
Enough to describe the world: big, small, old, new, many, few.
- 大 · big
- 小 · small
- 多 · many, a lot
- 少 · few, little
- 高 · high, expensive
- 安 · cheap, calm
- 新 · new
- 古 · old
- 長 · long
体The body and everyday objects
A last practical group, around the body and the things you handle every day.
- 手 · hand
- 足 · foot, leg
- 目 · eye
- 耳 · ear
- 口 · mouth
- 車 · car
- 電 · electricity
- 本 · book, origin
- 語 · language, word
- 学 · study, to learn
- 分 · part, minute, to understand
学How to learn the N5 kanji
The big mistake is learning kanji in isolation, like symbols to carve one by one. It is exhausting and it does not last. The right approach fits in one sentence: learn kanji inside words.
A kanji on its own is abstract. The same kanji inside a word you use becomes concrete and carries its reading naturally. You do not learn 飲 and then 物 in a vacuum, you learn 飲み物 (nomimono, drink), and the two kanji come with it. This is the same logic that runs through our guide to the N5 vocabulary, where each word brings its kanji along for free.
Each kanji often has several readings: an on reading (from Chinese) and a kun reading (native Japanese). Do not try to memorize them all at once. Learn the reading that the word in front of you needs, and the rest will arrive with other words, later. Trying to front-load every reading is how beginners burn out on kanji.
復Making the kanji last over time
Kanji are perfect material for spaced repetition: they are visual items that memory drops quickly if you do not see them again. Instead of reviewing everything in one block, you see each kanji again just before you would forget it, at intervals that stretch out. It is the same method behind the way we suggest you learn the kana, and it works just as well for characters with more strokes.
続A hundred kanji, painlessly
From a distance the list looks frightening. Cut into groups and learned inside words, a hundred kanji covers quietly over a few months, a handful of characters at a time. To place the kanji inside the full program, read the complete N5 guide.
That is the Hibi approach: the kanji always appear inside real words and real sentences, never in a cold table, and spaced repetition decides for you what to review and when. Hibi is launching soon on the App Store, and you can read more about how it works on the Hibi page.