Jōyō kanji


The jōyō kanji are kanji listed on the Jōyō kanji hyō, which is issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The current list of 2,136 characters was issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the kanji, which was the initial list of secondary school–level kanji standardized after World War II. The list is not a comprehensive list of all characters and readings in regular use; rather, it is intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, as well as a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents. Due to the requirement that official government documents make use of only kanji and their readings, several rare characters are also included due to their use in the Constitution of Japan, which was being written at the same time the original 1,850-character kanji list was compiled.
The 2,136 kanji in the kanji consist of:

Changes from the kanji

In 1981, the kanji replaced the kanji as the standardized list of common kanji. The differences between the two consisted of 95 additional characters, and the simplification of wikt:燈#Japanese as wikt:灯#Japanese.

History

  • 1923: The Ministry of Education specified 1,962 kanji and 154 simplified characters.
  • 1931: The former kanji list was revised and 1,858 characters were specified.
  • 1942: 1,134 characters as standard kanji and 1,320 characters as sub- kanji were specified.
  • 1946: The 1,850 characters of kanji were adopted by law "as those most essential for common use and everyday communication". This list included 881 "basic requirement" kanji for elementary school.
  • 1981: The 1,945 characters of kanji were adopted, replacing the list of kanji.
  • 2010: The list was revised on 30 November to include an additional 196 characters and remove five characters, for a total of 2,136. The amendment also made changes to the readings of kanji present in the previous kanji list. Twenty-eight kanji gained new readings, three kanji lost obscure readings and the of wikt:側#Japanese was changed from kawa to gawa. The 196 additional characters are:
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology instructed teachers to start teaching the new characters in fiscal 2012, so that junior high school students would be able to read them and high school students would be able to write them. High schools and universities started using the characters in their entrance exams in the 2015 academic year.