Japanese Kanji Finder
Enter an English word or a Japanese character to find matching kanji, readings and meanings.
What are kanji? Kanji are characters originally adopted from Chinese writing and used in Japanese to represent meanings and parts of words. Many have more than one reading, depending on the word and context.
Japanese also uses hiragana and katakana. Kanji often work with hiragana in verbs—for example, 食べる (taberu, to eat) uses kanji for the core meaning and hiragana for the ending. Read our introduction to Japanese kanji for more examples and guidance.
Search the kanji database
Try an English meaning such as water, or enter a Japanese character such as 水.
Searches are limited to 20 characters.
Kanji data is provided by the KANJIDIC project maintained by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group.