JLPT N5 Kanji List: All 80 Characters, Readings, Meanings

Most JLPT N5 study lists cover 80 kanji, and some stretch to about 100 to be safe. On this page you get the full list with onyomi and kunyomi readings, meanings, stroke counts, a themed breakdown, stroke order basics, and a free printable chart.

What is the JLPT N5 kanji list

The JLPT is the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, and N5 is the first level. It checks whether you can read and understand basic Japanese: simple sentences, everyday phrases, short notices, and slow conversation.

Here is the part that surprises people. There is no official kanji list. The test organizers used to publish content lists, but they stopped after the test was redesigned. Now they publish sample questions and a general description of each level instead.

So every N5 kanji list you find, including this one, is an educated estimate. Teachers and publishers compare past exams, beginner textbooks, and word frequency, then agree on a core set. The good news is that the lists overlap almost completely. The 80 characters below are on nearly every version, and they are the ones you will actually meet first in real Japanese.

One more thing worth knowing early. N5 assumes you already read hiragana and katakana, the two phonetic scripts with 46 basic characters each. If those are still shaky, spend a week there first. Kanji becomes much easier once the kana around it stop slowing you down.

How many kanji are on the N5 list

The short answer: about 80. The longer answer depends on which list you use.

List size	Who uses it	What it means for you
80 kanji	Most study sites, apps, and beginner charts	The core set. Every character here is high frequency.
~100 kanji	Some textbook-based lists	The core 80 plus common extras such as 立, 早, 少, 花.
~110 to 120 kanji	Cautious “cover everything” lists	Adds characters that sometimes appear in N5 reading passages.

If you are choosing, start with 80. Learn them properly, then add extras as you meet them in reading. A character you have seen in a real sentence sticks better than one you met in a list.

For context, N4 pushes the working total to roughly 300, and the full set of everyday-use kanji taught through Japanese schooling is 2,136. N5 is a small, friendly slice of that. It is also the slice that shows up on train signs, menus, prices, and dates, so it pays off immediately.

The full JLPT N5 kanji list

Here are the 80 characters, ordered roughly by how often they appear in written Japanese. Onyomi readings are listed first, then kunyomi. Readings in this table are written in romaji so you can read them at a glance; the parts in brackets are the hiragana endings that attach to the character.

#	Kanji	Onyomi	Kunyomi	Meaning	Strokes
1	日	nichi, jitsu	hi, -bi, -ka	day, sun, Japan	4
2	一	ichi, itsu	hito(tsu)	one	1
3	国	koku	kuni	country	8
4	人	jin, nin	hito	person	2
5	年	nen	toshi	year	6
6	大	dai, tai	oo(kii)	big, large	3
7	十	juu	tou, to	ten	2
8	二	ni, ji	futa(tsu)	two	2
9	本	hon	moto	book, origin, main	5
10	中	chuu	naka	middle, inside	4
11	長	chou	naga(i)	long, chief	8
12	出	shutsu	de(ru), da(su)	exit, go out, take out	5
13	三	san	mit(tsu)	three	3
14	時	ji	toki	time, hour	10
15	行	kou, gyou	i(ku), okona(u)	go, carry out	6
16	見	ken	mi(ru)	see, look	7
17	月	getsu, gatsu	tsuki	month, moon, Monday	4
18	分	bun, fun, bu	wa(keru), wa(karu)	minute, part, understand	4
19	後	go, kou	ato, ushi(ro), nochi	after, behind, later	9
20	前	zen	mae	before, front	9
21	生	sei, shou	i(kiru), u(mareru), nama	life, birth, raw	5
22	五	go	itsu(tsu)	five	4
23	間	kan, ken	aida, ma	interval, space, between	12
24	上	jou	ue, a(geru), nobo(ru)	above, up, climb	3
25	東	tou	higashi	east	8
26	四	shi	yon, yot(tsu)	four	5
27	今	kon, kin	ima	now	4
28	金	kin, kon	kane	gold, money, Friday	8
29	九	kyuu, ku	kokono(tsu)	nine	2
30	入	nyuu	hai(ru), i(reru)	enter, put in	2
31	学	gaku	mana(bu)	study, learning	8
32	高	kou	taka(i)	high, tall, expensive	10
33	円	en	maru(i)	circle, yen	4
34	子	shi, su	ko	child	3
35	外	gai, ge	soto, hoka	outside	5
36	八	hachi	yat(tsu), you	eight	2
37	六	roku	mut(tsu), mui	six	4
38	下	ka, ge	shita, sa(geru), kuda(saru)	below, down, lower	3
39	来	rai	ku(ru)	come, next	7
40	気	ki, ke	(none common)	spirit, mind, air	6
41	小	shou	chii(sai), ko-, o-	small	3
42	七	shichi	nana(tsu)	seven	2
43	山	san	yama	mountain	3
44	話	wa	hana(su), hanashi	talk, story	13
45	女	jo, nyo	onna, me	woman, female	3
46	北	hoku	kita	north	5
47	午	go	(none common)	noon	4
48	百	hyaku	(none common)	hundred	6
49	書	sho	ka(ku)	write	10
50	先	sen	saki	previous, ahead, tip	6
51	名	mei, myou	na	name	6
52	川	sen	kawa	river	3
53	千	sen	chi	thousand	3
54	水	sui	mizu	water, Wednesday	4
55	半	han	naka(ba)	half	5
56	男	dan, nan	otoko	man, male	7
57	西	sei, sai	nishi	west	6
58	電	den	(none common)	electricity	13
59	校	kou	(none common)	school	10
60	語	go	kata(ru)	language, word	14
61	土	do, to	tsuchi	earth, soil, Saturday	3
62	木	boku, moku	ki, ko-	tree, wood, Thursday	4
63	聞	bun, mon	ki(ku)	hear, listen, ask	14
64	食	shoku	ta(beru), ku(u)	eat, food	9
65	車	sha	kuruma	car, vehicle	7
66	何	ka	nani, nan	what	7
67	南	nan	minami	south	9
68	万	man, ban	(none common)	ten thousand	3
69	毎	mai	(none common)	every	6
70	白	haku, byaku	shiro(i)	white	5
71	天	ten	ame	heaven, sky	4
72	母	bo	haha, kaa	mother	5
73	火	ka	hi	fire, Tuesday	4
74	右	u, yuu	migi	right	5
75	読	doku, toku	yo(mu)	read	14
76	友	yuu	tomo	friend	4
77	左	sa	hidari	left	5
78	休	kyuu	yasu(mu)	rest, holiday	6
79	父	fu	chichi, tou	father	4
80	雨	u	ame	rain	8

A note on the table. Each kanji has more readings than the ones shown. These are the readings you will meet at N5, and they cover almost everything you will read at this level. Chasing every rare reading now costs time you could spend reading real sentences.

N5 kanji grouped by theme

Frequency order is honest but a little random to study from. Themes are easier on your memory because related characters share parts, share meanings, and show up in the same sentences.

Theme	Kanji	Why it helps
Numbers	一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 百 千 万 円	Prices, dates, times, phone numbers. The fastest first win.
Time and calendar	日 月 火 水 木 金 土 年 時 分 半 今 毎 午 前 後 間	The days of the week reuse the nature kanji. Learn one set, get two.
People	人 男 女 子 母 父 友 先 生 名	Covers 先生 for teacher, 学生 for student, and most self-introductions.
Places and directions	上 下 中 外 右 左 東 西 南 北 国 山 川 校	Station signs, maps, and directions lean on these constantly.
Nature and weather	山 川 木 水 火 土 天 気 雨 白	Simple shapes, strong pictures. Good for mnemonics.
Verbs	行 来 見 聞 読 書 話 食 出 入 休 分	Almost every beginner sentence uses one of these.
Descriptions	大 小 高 長 白	Small group, big payoff in everyday adjectives.
Everyday things	本 車 電 語 気 何	電車 for train and 日本語 for Japanese language come straight from here.

Some characters appear in two themes, and that is a feature rather than a problem. 木 is a tree and also Thursday. Meeting the same character in two contexts strengthens it.

A simple route through the list looks like this:

1. Numbers first, because they are short and instantly useful.
2. Days of the week next, since they recycle the nature kanji.
3. People and places, which unlock introductions and signs.
4. Verbs, which unlock sentences.
5. Descriptions and everyday things to fill the gaps.

How onyomi and kunyomi readings work

Most kanji have two kinds of reading, and this is the part that confuses new learners the most. It is simpler than it looks.

Onyomi is the reading that came in from Chinese along with the character. Kunyomi is the native Japanese word that already existed for that meaning.

The rough pattern:

• A kanji standing alone, or followed by hiragana, usually takes its kunyomi.
• Two or more kanji stuck together usually take their onyomi.

Look at 山. On its own it is yama, a mountain. Inside 富士山 it is san, giving Fujisan.

Same with 人. Alone it is hito, a person. In 日本人 it is jin, giving Nihonjin, a Japanese person.

And 食. With hiragana attached in 食べる it is ta(beru), to eat. In 食堂 it is shoku, giving shokudou, a dining hall.

The pattern holds often enough to be useful and breaks often enough to be annoying. 一日 can be tsuitachi for the first of the month. 今日 is kyou, which matches neither reading neatly.

So here is the practical advice. Do not memorize reading tables. Learn each kanji attached to one or two real words instead.

• 日 with 日本 (Nihon) and 今日 (kyou)
• 学 with 学生 (gakusei) and 学校 (gakkou)
• water 水 with 水曜日 (suiyoubi) and みず on its own

Words carry the reading for you. By the time you have seen 学 in five words, you know which reading goes where without ever having studied a table. Exceptions stop feeling like exceptions and start feeling like vocabulary.

Stroke order basics for N5 kanji

Stroke order is the sequence you use to write each part of a character. The JLPT never asks you to write, so stroke order is not tested. It still helps, for three reasons.

First, it makes characters look balanced instead of crowded. Second, it makes handwriting recognition and dictionary lookup work properly. Third, it forces you to notice each part, which is exactly what stops 土 and 士 from blurring together.

If you want to see any character from the list above drawn stroke by stroke, paste it into our free kanji stroke order tool and watch it animate in the correct order.

The core rules cover almost every N5 character:

1. Top to bottom. 三 is written as three horizontal strokes from the top down.
2. Left to right. 川 goes left stroke, middle, right.
3. Horizontal before vertical when strokes cross. 十 is the horizontal, then the vertical.
4. Outside before inside. In 月 the outer frame comes before the two inner lines.
5. Enclosures close last. In 国 you write the left and top of the box, then everything inside, then the bottom line seals it.
6. Center before the sides in symmetric shapes. 小 starts with the center stroke.
7. Piercing strokes go last. In 母 the long horizontal that runs through the whole character is the final stroke. 中 works the same way, with its vertical last.
8. Left-falling before right-falling. In 人, the stroke that falls to the left comes first.

Two N5 characters deserve a warning.

右 and 左 look like mirror images but do not start the same way. 右 begins with the short left-falling stroke. 左 begins with the horizontal. It is a small difference, and it is the reason many learners write one of them slightly wrong for years.

If you want to see the strokes move rather than read about them, the animated stroke order demo plays each character one stroke at a time. Watching once and then copying it three times is usually enough for a simple N5 kanji.

Ways to practice and remember N5 kanji

There is no single right way to learn these; do what feels right for you. Here are the approaches that work, with an honest note on what each one is good at.

Method	Best for	Effort	Notes
Flashcards with smart reviews	Fast reading recognition	Low per session	Great for volume. Add words, not just single characters.
Handwriting practice	Telling look-alikes apart, deep memory	Medium	Slower per character, stronger recall of the parts.
Mnemonics and stories	Stubborn characters	Low	休 is a person 人 resting against a tree 木.
Reading real material	Readings in context	Medium	Graded readers and children’s books work well at N5.
Writing out example sentences	Grammar plus kanji together	Higher	Two skills in one session.
Timed self-tests	Exam readiness	Low	Shows you what you only half know.

Reading recognition and handwriting are not rivals

This comes up constantly, so it is worth being clear.

Reading recognition is seeing 電車 and instantly knowing it says densha. That is the skill the JLPT tests, and it is the skill you use to read a menu.

Handwriting is producing the character from memory, stroke by stroke. That skill is not on the exam.

So why write? Because writing makes you look at every part. Once you have written 待 and 持 a few times, they stop looking like the same character. Learners who only read often confuse look-alike pairs; learners who write tend not to.

The sensible answer is both, in different amounts. Recognition drills give you speed and coverage. Writing gives you precision on the characters that keep tricking you. You do not need to write all 80 by hand, and you do not need to skip writing entirely either.

A realistic schedule

Three to five new characters a day gets you through all 80 in about three weeks. Add ten minutes of review on the older ones and the whole thing fits in twenty minutes a day.

Review at growing gaps: the next day, three days later, a week later, then a month later. This is spaced repetition, and it works because you catch each character just before you would have forgotten it. Any tool that tracks dates does the job, including a paper calendar.

Testing yourself

Before you sit an N5 mock test, check both directions.

• Kanji to meaning and reading: can you look at 半 and say han, half?
• Word to kanji: shown “half past two”, can you produce 二時半?

The second direction is harder, and it exposes gaps the first one hides. Anything you miss twice goes on a short problem list. Six problem characters practiced daily beats eighty practiced vaguely.

How Kana Conbini can help

Kana Conbini is one friendly option among many, and it is free to start.

• Conbini Run is a convenience-store roguelike where you read hiragana, katakana, and kanji to serve customers, so recognition practice happens while you play.
• Write Kanji (書き取り) is a dedicated handwriting mode covering all 46 hiragana, 46 katakana, and 2,126 kanji, with on-screen stroke order guides that fade as you improve.
• Over 10,000 real vocabulary words across the full JLPT range, N5 to N1, are available now, with native Japanese voice on every word, so you learn readings inside real words rather than from a table.
• Smart reviews bring each card back right before you would forget it, and visual mnemonic hints fade as you master each character.
• It runs on iPhone and Android with no subscription. In the free tier, daily handwriting uses an energy meter that refills over time or with an ad, and a one-time pack makes it unlimited.

If you would rather learn from paper, that is completely fine. The chart below and the free printable practice sheets work perfectly well on their own.

Free printable N5 kanji chart

You can print the full 80-character list above as a one-page chart. No email address, no account, no paywall.

The chart includes each kanji, its main readings, its meaning, and its stroke count, laid out to stay readable at normal print size. Pin it somewhere you look often and tick characters off as they become automatic.

If you want to write rather than just read, the free Japanese writing practice sheets now include trace sheets for all 80 N5 kanji: each character printed faint in a grid row so you trace it, then copy it freehand. Grid paper matters more than people expect at the start, because kanji balance depends on where the parts sit relative to each other.

For step-by-step animations of any character on this list, the stroke order demo shows each stroke in order at a speed you can follow.

More beginner guides live on the learn hub, and you can find everything else on the Kana Conbini home page.

Eighty characters is a small number. You can meet all of them in a month and still be reading them years from now, on signs, on menus, and in every Japanese sentence you pick up next. Start with 一.