Kanji is a logographic writing system consisting of thousands of characters, with the Jōyō Kanji list containing 2,136 characters for common use. Originating from Chinese characters, Kanji was introduced to Japan around the 5th century and is used to represent words, ideas, or parts of words in Japanese. Unlike phonetic scripts, each Kanji character carries its own meaning and pronunciation.
Kanji characters are categorized by radicals (components that indicate meaning or sound) and have multiple readings, including Onyomi (Chinese-derived readings) and Kunyomi (Japanese-native readings). Examples of Kanji include 日 (sun/day), 月 (moon/month), and 山 (mountain). Kanji is an essential part of the Japanese writing system and is used alongside Hiragana and Katakana in modern texts.
Kanji does not have a fixed number of letters like phonetic scripts. Instead, it consists of thousands of characters, with the Jōyō Kanji list containing 2,136 characters for common use. Kanji characters are derived from Chinese characters and are used to represent words, ideas, or parts of words in Japanese.
Kanji characters are categorized by radicals (components that indicate meaning or sound) and have multiple readings, including Onyomi (Chinese-derived readings) and Kunyomi (Japanese-native readings). While Kanji is used for writing numbers, Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) are also commonly used in modern Japanese.