Kanji Browser

The Kanji Browser has three parts:

Navigation Area

There are three ways of browsing kanji in the Navigation Area that can be switched from the toolbar:

Browsing by sets

Kanji are organised in two ways – by the school grades at which they are taught in Japan and by the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) levels aimed at foreigners. We've further subdivided the kanji into blocks of 20 to make studying the larger sets more manageable. The average training progress is indicated for each subset of 20 kanji by the piechart icon in the column on the right.

Kanji sets

Additionally sets are provided for all Jōyō kanji (that is kanji taught in Japanese schools), kanji marked for practice and kanji returned from any recent search.

Search kanji by radical parts

Kanji are made up of one or more radicals and searching by these elements is a convenient way to lookup kanji where you are unfamiliar with the meaning or readings.

Search by radical parts

Radical parts are organised by stroke count, indicated in the orange squares. You can select as many parts as you like to perform a search. Note some radicals can't be easily represented on their own using the Japanese fonts supplied with your Mac, in these cases close equivalents have been substituted for the buttons labels.

Simple & advanced searching

iKanji provides two methods for freeform kanji searches. The simple search will compare your search query against each kanji's character, English meaning and readings. Any matches will be returned.

Advanced search interface

The advanced search lets you perform searches where more specific results are required such as matching the JLPT level, a certain stroke count or main radical.

Kanji List

Kanji can be viewed either in a list or grid. In the grid view mini-flash cards are used to represent each kanji:

Kanji in grid view
  1. The kanji itself
  2. Blue border indicates the selected card
  3. The English meaning
  4. Stroke count
  5. Training progress piechart
  6. Main radical
Kanji in list view
  1. The kanji itself
  2. English meaning
  3. Kanji readings (on'yomi in Katakana, kun'yomi in Hiragana)
  4. Main radical
  5. Training progress piechart
  6. Stroke count

Sorting displayed kanji

Kanji can be sorted by stroke count (the default), by their main radical, alphabetically by their English meaning or by their current training progress using the drop down menu above the list of displayed kanji.

Kanji Flashcard

Large kanji display

The upper right portion of the Kanji Flashcard is dominated by the large pane containing the selected kanji. Where a film strip icon is present in the pane, you can mouse over it and press the play button to display a looping stroke animation. Strokes are coloured in shades of red with the final stroke being the brightest and the earliest the darkest.

Detail Tab

The Detail area displays general information about the kanji including its English meaning, all its readings, its grade, JLPT level and radical.

The blue magnifying-glass buttons (pictured above) allow you to quickly search for kanji with similar properties, for example radical, stroke count and grade.

Examples Tab

The Examples pane shows a selection of words containing the current kanji.

Return to Help Topics