Many Japanese learners think that they absolutely have to learn kanji.

It's true that learning kanji is essential if you want to become fluent in reading and competent with the language.

But you need to know all of them?

There are 2,136 kanji that native Japanese speakers should know, which are called Jōyō Kanji in Japanese, meaning "daily use kanji".

We learn 1,026 kanji in elementary school (6 - 12 years old) and 1,110 kanji in middle school (12-15 years old).

We spend in total 9 years learning 2,136 kanji.

If you're motivated to learn them all, you can definitely do it, and you can even learn them in a shorter amount of time.

But if your goal is to be able to speak and read Japanese at a conversational level without becoming an expert, you don't need to know everything.

Here's why:

Not all Japanese people know all the kanji

especially how to write and pronounce them.

We don’t know how to write them all, simply because nowadays, we rarely use handwriting to communicate.

When we're texting or emailing in Japanese, we usually type in hiragana and the phone/computer suggests kanji options based on the pronunciation.

Then we simply choose the right kanji.

Let's say I want to write "I go home" in Japanese:

Kaeru帰る

When I type on my phone, I write it in Hiragana first.

かえる

Then, I get these suggestions:

They are all pronounced the same. But I know that the second option is the correct kanji for "to go home," so I select it.

This is exactly how it looks on my phone

We still need to know the right kanji, but we don’t necessarily need to know how to write them.

It's similar to typing in English, where you may not be sure how to spell certain words, but your phone will autocorrect them.

We also don’t know how to pronounce every kanji, especially those that we don’t really use in our daily life.

Because one kanji has several ways to pronounce and it can change when you combine it with another kanji.

For example, 止 this kanji is pronounced "TO" and used in the verb 止める (Tomeru), which means "to stop".

To meru止める

Now look at this kanji here 血, it is pronounced “Chi”, which means blood.

Chi血

If we combine 止 (To) and 血 (Chi), we get 止血, which means "hemostasis".

It all makes sense, right?

But the tricky part is that we don’t pronounce the word “To Chi” but:

Shi Ketsu止 血

While this is a simple kanji for native Japanese speakers, reading kanji can be very challenging and not everyone knows how to read them correctly.

But even if we don’t know how to pronounce every kanji, we usually know, or can often guess, its meaning.

Because we often perceive them as signs or symbols, much like street signs.

For example, when you look at this sign 🚫, you know that it means “stop”.

It's pretty much like this when we read kanji.

So if you know 止 means "stop" and "血" means "blood", even if you don't know how to pronounce it, we can guess what that means easily.

There is good news for you.

Many children's books, books for Japanese learners, and even some manga have hiragana next to or above kanji, so even if you don't know how to read kanji, you can read them.

友達と遊ぶ

I hang out with my friend

This small hiragana above kanji is called:

Furigana

So, if you are worried that you need to learn Kanji to be able to read Japanese, don’t worry too much.

You can find plenty of books with furigana, and in my course, I always use furigana as well.