Kanji Stroke Order Rules: Top to Bottom, Left to Right, and the Exceptions

The kanji stroke order taught in Japanese schools goes back to a guide the Ministry of Education published in 1958, Hitsujun Shidō no Tebiki (A Guide to Teaching Stroke Order). It covered the 881 kanji taught in schools at the time, and its purpose was to keep stroke order as consistent as possible so that teaching would not get confusing.

The current teaching guidelines commentary for elementary school Japanese (2017) describes stroke order as “a rational order of writing that has become a habit,” and says the order taught in school follows commonly accepted principles such as “top to bottom,” “left to right” and “horizontal before vertical.”

If you have started writing kanji as a learner of Japanese, these principles are worth knowing early. This article goes through them with example characters, along with the characters that do not follow them. Each character name links to its stroke order page on this site.

The guide does not declare one right answer

The first thing to know is that the guide itself does not reject other stroke orders. In its statement of purpose, it says the orders it shows were chosen to avoid confusion in teaching, and that this does not mean other stroke orders are wrong or should be rejected (as quoted in Shimizu and Tsunoda, “Stroke Order Teaching in Teacher Training”, in Japanese).

Plenty of characters have two or three stroke orders that have been handed down. Schools pick one so a whole class can learn the same sequence. If you learned some Chinese characters first, you may also find a few that differ. Mainland China and Taiwan, for example, write the horizontal stroke of the 𠂇 shape first in every character, so 右 starts differently there than in Japan. For writing Japanese, follow the order used in Japanese textbooks.

Two basic rules

The guide sets out two basic rules that everything else builds on.

Basic rule 1: top to bottom. Write the upper strokes and the upper parts first. 三 and 工 both start with the top horizontal stroke. A character made of stacked parts, such as 言, is also written from the top down.

Basic rule 2: left to right. Write the left strokes and the left parts first. 川 starts with the left line, and 休 starts with the person radical on the left. A radical on the left followed by a component on the right is the most common shape among kanji.

Eight principles

On top of the basic rules, the guide lists eight principles.

1. Horizontal before vertical. When a horizontal and a vertical stroke cross, the horizontal usually comes first, as in 十 and 土.

2. Horizontal after vertical. Only in certain cases does the horizontal come later. One is 田 and characters containing it, such as 由 and 角. In 田, you write the left vertical, then the stroke that covers the top and right side, then the middle vertical, and only then the middle and bottom horizontals. The other is 王 and characters containing it: the top horizontal, then the vertical, then the remaining two horizontals.

3. Center first. When a character has a center part with one or two strokes on each side, write the center first, as in 小 and 水. The exceptions are the heart radical in 性 and the character 火, where the side strokes come first.

4. Outside first. For an enclosing shape, write the outside first, as in 国 and 同.

5. Left-falling before right-falling. When a left-falling stroke and a right-falling stroke cross, the left one comes first, as in 文 and 父.

6. A vertical stroke that runs through the whole character comes last, as in 中 and 車.

7. A horizontal stroke that runs through the whole character comes last, as in 女 and 子.

8. Horizontal and left-falling strokes. If the horizontal is long and the left-falling stroke is short, the left-falling stroke comes first: 右, 有, 布, 希. If the horizontal is short and the left-falling stroke is long, the horizontal comes first: 左, 友, 在, 存.

Characters that break the pattern

The guide adds notes to some characters. These are the ones people most often get wrong.

右 and 左. Following principle 8, 右 starts with the left-falling stroke and 左 starts with the horizontal. They look alike but start differently, which makes them the pair beginners mix up most.

区 and 医. These are enclosing shapes, but you do not finish the outside first as in principle 4. Write the top horizontal, then the inside, and finish with the stroke that turns along the left and bottom.

世. Principle 7 puts a through horizontal last, but 世 starts with its long horizontal. The guide singles out 世 as the one that is different.

里 and 重. The vertical does not stick out at the top or the bottom, so it is not written last as in principle 6. Write the upper part, then the vertical, then the lower part.

Enclosing radicals at the bottom left. The guide treats these as cases the principles cannot explain. Some are written first, as in 起 and 題. Others are written last, such as the movement radical in 近 and the one in 建.

Left-falling strokes. Also not covered by the principles. In 九 and 成 the left-falling stroke comes first; in 力 and 原 it comes later.

Characters with more than one common order

The guide names characters such as 止, 上, 耳, 必 and 発 as having two or more widely used stroke orders, and then shows one of them.

上, for example, is taught in school starting with the vertical stroke, but other orders have long been in use. 必 is also written in a different order in classical calligraphy. If a native speaker writes one of these differently from your textbook, neither of you is wrong. Schools simply settled on one.

Why stroke order is worth learning

The rules are worth knowing less for their own sake than for how they help when you write.

One reason to learn stroke order is that the shape comes out better. In 右 and 左, writing the short stroke first lets you place the long stroke and set its length against the one already on the page. Stroke order is often the order in which the shape gets decided.

Another is that the same component is written in the same order wherever it appears. Once you have 田 right, the 田 in 男, 町 and 畑 follows the same sequence. If a basic character is learned in the wrong order, the same mistake shows up in every character built from it. That is why it pays to check the simple characters early.

And once you know the principles, you can make a reasonable guess at the stroke order of a character you have never seen. That is much easier than memorizing every character one by one.

Checking the stroke order

The kanji stroke order pages on this site (in Japanese) show all 1,026 kanji taught in Japanese elementary schools, stroke by stroke with numbers. You can also check each character in this article through the links above.

For a first session with KanjiN, see Getting Started with KanjiN. For kana, hiragana stroke order mistakes covers the characters people most often write in the wrong order.

Tracing kanji in KanjiN

KanjiN is a kanji app for iPhone and iPad where you answer by handwriting. Instead of tapping a choice, you write on the screen with a finger or stylus, and the app recognizes what you wrote.

For stroke order, there is the Stroke Order Drill. You trace the strokes in order to learn the shape, and when you finish, the app compares your writing with the model and gives a score. It is a good way to turn what you checked on a chart into something your hand remembers. After that, the Writing Drill asks you to recall and write the kanji from its reading alone.

Besides school grades 1 to 6 and Kanken levels 10 to 5, you can practice JLPT N5 to N3 kanji. Today’s Drill, Today’s Challenge and the 10-question Skill Check are free. A one-time purchase, Unlock Everything, opens every drill, with no ads and no subscription. The first time you use it, the app downloads what it needs to read handwriting, so you need an internet connection then.

To compare the app with other ways of studying, see KanjiN vs Other Ways to Practice Kanji.