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Should I learn Kanji characters? How many kanji do I need to learn?

February 1, 2022

If you are working in Japan, living in Japan, or aiming for an intermediate level or higher, the answer is yes.
The target number depends on your learning objectives. For example, if you want to be able to live comfortably in daily life in Japan, you should aim for about 1000 characters.
If you want to understand newspapers, books, magazines, Manga, etc., please refer to the following table.
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Number of kanji learned : How much you can understand (supplementary information)
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(1)100 characters : approx. 30% (Can read only some plain kanji. It is difficult to grasp the meaning of the whole text.)
(2)300 characters : approx. 50% (Begins to get used to kanji and can guess the meaning of difficult kanji.
(3)500 characters : approx. 70% (Can understand almost all the kanji that appear in the manga)
(4)1000 characters : approx. 90% (Can understand most of the kanji found in daily life)
(5)2000 characters : approx. 95% (Knowledge equivalent to that of an average Japanese working adult. Can live in a Japanese only environment without any difficulty)

If you take the JLPT, you will usually need the following number of kanji and study time.
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Level : Number of Kanji to learn (approximate number of study hours required to pass)
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N5 : 100 characters (150 hours)
N4 : 300 characters (300 hours)
N3 : 600 characters (450 hours)
N2 : 1000 characters (600 hours)
N1 : 2000 characters (900 hours)