Can You Learn Kanji by Reading? How to Pick Up Kanji from Books

The Jōyō kanji list, issued by the Japanese government in 2010, contains 2,136 characters and 4,388 readings. Newspapers, magazines and ordinary books for adults are written mostly within this range. The JLPT, on the other hand, has not published kanji lists for each level since its 2010 revision (JLPT FAQ). No exam tells you exactly which kanji to learn, or how many.

Many learners start working through those 2,136 characters with flashcards and stop somewhere in the middle. That is usually when the idea comes up: if I just read enough books, won’t the kanji stick on their own? This post looks at what reading does well, where it falls short, and how to combine it with flashcards.

What reading does well

The biggest advantage is that you meet kanji inside words. Kanji are used far more often as parts of words than on their own, and the reading changes with the word. 生 is せい in 生活 (daily life), しょう in 一生 (a lifetime), う in 生まれる (to be born) and い in 生きる (to live). Meeting 生まれる again and again in a story can teach you which reading goes with which word better than memorising five readings of 生 from a card.

The second advantage is that common kanji come up often. In a single novel you will see characters like 言, 見, 思 and 手 dozens of times. You don’t need to schedule reviews for them; reading puts them in front of you, most frequent first.

The third is that memories come with a story attached. Remembering that you read a word in a particular scene, in a particular character’s line, tends to last longer than a line on a flashcard.

Where reading alone falls short

Left entirely to reading, some things don’t go well.

Less common kanji rarely appear. If common characters show up often, the flip side is that uncommon ones may appear only a few times however much you read. Some Jōyō kanji almost never turn up in fiction, and what you meet depends heavily on the kind of books you choose.

You guess the reading and move on. You can often work out the meaning from context while having no idea how the word is read. That is fine while reading silently, but a word learned with the wrong reading won’t be recognised when you hear it, and you won’t be able to say it.

Similar shapes blur together. Pairs like 未 and 末, 土 and 士, or 待 and 持 are easy to read past without ever telling them apart, because the context carries you.

So another way is to think of reading as where you meet kanji, and flashcards or a word book as where you check them, rather than treating reading as a replacement for study.

Combining flashcards and reading

Here is one possible order.

Learn the basic characters first. Japanese elementary schools teach 1,026 kanji, 80 of them in the first year. Characters like 日, 月, 人, 大 and 山 also appear as parts of many other kanji. Learning the first few hundred with flashcards means that when you start reading, even unfamiliar characters contain shapes you recognise.

After that, learn from words you meet in books. It can be easier to keep going if you pick up words that have appeared several times in what you read, instead of pushing a deck through to character number 2,136. Make the word the unit, not the character. Learn 経験 (experience) as a word, then look at 経 and 験 one at a time.

Look a word up the second time you meet it. The first time, guessing from context and reading on is fine. If it comes back, it matters in this book, so check its reading and meaning and add it to your word book. If you are unsure what to look up, the approach in Which Words Should You Look Up When Reading in English? works just as well for Japanese.

Say the reading aloud when you review. When reviewing your word book, check the reading out loud, not only the meaning. It is the simplest guard against the guessed-reading problem above.

Reading kanji and writing kanji

Knowing a kanji can mean two different things. To read it, you only need to see the shape and connect it with a word you know. To write it, you have to recall every detail of the shape and reproduce it by hand. Plenty of native speakers can read kanji they cannot write.

In 2010, the Council for Cultural Affairs, in its report on the revised Jōyō list, took the view that people do not need to be able to handwrite every Jōyō kanji. Most writing now happens on computers and phones, where picking the right character from the conversion candidates is often enough.

Learners can also put most of their effort into reading first. More kanji you can read means more books you can read, which means more kanji you meet. Handwriting can be a separate practice, starting with your name, your address and the characters you use most. The JLPT itself has no questions that ask you to write kanji by hand.

Looking at one character at a time

Once you know a word, two things help when you look at its characters individually.

One is the part that carries meaning. The left side of 海 (sea), 池 (pond) and 泳 (to swim) is 氵, which relates to water. The 言 in 話 (talk), 語 (language) and 読 (to read) relates to words. Knowing these parts sometimes lets you guess the meaning of a character you have never seen.

The other is the part that carries sound. 青, 晴, 清 and 精 are all read セイ in their on reading. Many characters that share an on reading share a component. It doesn’t always hold, but it gives you a starting guess.

For the meanings, readings, school grade and stroke count of individual characters, besides kanji dictionaries there is KANJIDIC2, kanji data published by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG). Dictionary sites such as Jisho use it too.

Checking kanji as you read with Niho

Niho, an app I make for iPhone and iPad, lets you read Aozora Bunko books with a built-in dictionary. It is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases.

Long-press a word in the text and tap Look up. Below the word’s meanings and JLPT level is the Kanji breakdown, which lists each kanji in the word. For each character you see its meanings in English, its on and kun readings, the school grade it is taught in (or Jōyō or name kanji for those outside the elementary list), and its stroke count. The data comes from KANJIDIC2. You learn the word and check each character on the spot, which is exactly the “word first, then characters” order described above.

Words you look up are saved to your word book with their reading, meaning and the sentence you met them in. The Reading quiz asks you to type the reading of a kanji word in kana. To hear a word, choose Speak in the selection menu and the device’s Japanese voice reads it.

Furigana appear only where the original printed edition behind the Aozora Bunko text had them. Children’s books have them on most kanji, books for adults only on difficult ones, and you can turn them off. How to step away from furigana is in When to Stop Using Furigana, extensive reading in general is in How to Start Extensive Reading in Japanese, Level by Level, and Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.