There are two special cases where you may have a hard time reading kanji compounds: jukujikun and ateji. A jukujikun is a unique kun-reading assigned to an entire kanji compound rather than to each kanji character separately. For example, the compound 明日 (tomorrow) can be read as myōnichi using the on-reading of each character in the compound one after another, as in the majority of typical kanji compounds, but can also be read as asu, which is a jukujikun. In the latter case, it is impossible to tell which syllable corresponds to 明 and which syllable corresponds to 日 because the reading is assigned to the whole compound. Other examples of jukujikun include 一日 tsuitachi (the first day of the month), 五月雨 samidare (early summer rain), 海老 ebi (shrimp), and 土産 miyage (souvenir).
Ateji are kanji characters whose sounds are used to represent native Japanese words or non-Chinese loanwords regardless of the meanings of the kanji. For example, the kanji compound 寿司 is made of ateji. It is pronounced sushi, and means sushi, the food, even though 寿 means one’s natural life span and 司 means to administer, neither of which are directly related to food. Other examples of ateji include 目出度い medetai (happy), 出鱈目 detarame (random), and 珈琲 kōhī (coffee). Many ateji for non-Chinese loanwords, including proper names, have been replaced by katakana, but some are still used. In addition, new ateji are occasionally created.
What are radicals?
Most kanji characters are composed of two or more components. Each component may contribute to the kanji’s meaning, sound, or merely its shape. For example, 日 is an independent kanji character meaning sun, but is also a component that lends meaning to many kanji. For example:
明 bright 時 time 晴 clear up
There are many kanji-components, but the most basic and identifiable elements of kanji are called radicals. For hundreds of years, Chinese dictionaries have organized kanji characters according to their radicals. Each Chinese characters was assigned a radical and placed in an appropriate section of a dictionary according to the designated radical.
It is not always clear which component of a kanji is the radical, but this workbook shows the radical for each kanji at the upper right corner of the page. Whenever you learn a new kanji using this book, check its radical. It will help you understand and remember the meaning and the internal composition of the kanji. Eventually, you will be able to identify the radical just by looking at a kanji. There is an index of characters organized by radical near the end of this book.
Depending on its position in a kanji character, radicals are classified into seven categories, as shown in the chart on the opposite page:
How do I look up a kanji in a Japanese dictionary?
Many dictionaries list kanji characters according to their pronunciation, for both on-readings and kun-readings, either in kana or in Roman letters. So, if you know the reading of a kanji character, you can easily find it in such a dictionary using its pronunciation-based index. For example, The Original Modern Reader’s Japanese-English Character Dictionary by Andrew N. Nelson (Tuttle Publishing), has an on/kun index in the back, and kanji characters are alphabetically listed according to both their on-readings and their kun-readings in Roman letters with a unique code number provided for each character. Using that code number, you can easily find the page you should go to in the dictionary.
What if you see a kanji, but you don’t know how to read it? You could then use the radical index included in most dictionaries. In a radical index, hundreds of radicals are listed according to the radical’s total number of strokes. For example, 日 is the radical of 明, and it has 4 strokes. You can find the radical 日 in the radical list under the section for four-stroke radicals in just a few seconds. There you will find a code number, which will guide you to the list of all the kanji with the radical 日. For example, you will see many kanji, including 明, 晴, and 時, on the page specified by the code number for the radical 日. They are ordered according to their total stroke count. You can easily find the kanji character you want in the list.
If you have no clue about either the pronunciation or the radical of the kanji, you can use the kanji’s total stroke count as a reference. This book specifies the total stroke count for each kanji at the upper right corner of each page, but if you always write kanji in the correct stroke order and with the correct stroke count, you can figure it out by yourself.
How are kanji characters written?
To write kanji properly and legibly, it is very important to know how each stroke in a kanji is drawn. Here are some principles and tendencies for stroke endings, stroke directions, and stroke orders.
Stroke Endings
Each stroke ends in とめ tome (stop), はね hane (jump), or はらい harai (sweep). (Note that some diagonal lines end in stop-sweep.) For example, a vertical straight line can end in stop, jump, or sweep, as shown below:
とめ tome(stop) | はね hane(jump) | はらい harai(sweep) |
Stroke Directions
A stroke can be vertical, horizontal, diagonal, angled, or curved, or can be just a short abbreviated line.
Vertical lines always go from top to bottom, and horizontal lines always go from left to right.
Diagonal lines can go either downward or upward. For example:
If a stroke forms a corner, a sharp angle, or a curve, it goes from left to right and then goes down, or goes down and then left to right. For example:
Some strokes have a combination of a sharp angle and a curve. For example:
Some strokes are extremely short and are called てん ten. They may be vertical or slightly diagonal:
Stroke Order
You should remember how the strokes in each character are ordered in order to write a character neatly with the appropriate shape. Most kanji characters are written following the general principles of stroke order:
1. Kanji are written from top to bottom.
三 (three)
2. Kanji are written from left to right.
川 (river)
3. Horizontal strokes usually precede vertical strokes when crossing, although there are some exceptions such as 王 and 田.
十 (ten)
4. A central line usually precedes the strokes placed on its right and left.
小 (small)
5.