Kiki's Kanji Dictionary

Kiki the puppy

Welcome to Kiki's Kanji Dictionary. If you're studying written Japanese, Kiki can help you learn more about Kanji characters and compounds.

If you can't read Japanese and are looking for kanji translation you might visit Takanori Tomita. His site explains the different writing systems for Japanese, and he can translate phrases or help you find the precise characters for a kanji design.

Kiki is very different from the other online kanji dictionaries, such as WWWJDIC. because you can "browse" through pages, just like flipping through an expensive paper dictionary. Learn about related words and their meanings, rather than searching for a single kanji and viewing it out of context. Each entry has clickable kanji and radicals that link you to other kanji entries.

If you're eager to get started, try the basic search below. Please scroll down for detailed examples, tips, and instructions!

snapshot of framed dictionary showing
navigation index to the left

Kiki's dictionary is large, beautful, and best of all, free! Why? Kiki's Kanji Dictionary combines Jim Breen's popular "open source" elctronic Kanji dictionary KANJIDIC and his Japanese-English dictionary EDICT. Thank you to Dr. Breen and everyone who has contributed to these wonderful dictionaries!

Have fun!
Steve (and Kiki)

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News

I've added a search to help you get started. It's not perfect, but it's huge if you don't know how to use a kanji dictionary!

You can also study Japanese Kanji with Java Kanji Flashcard 500 which uses Java to teach Kanji in any browser. Check it out!

I've added Kiki's Kanji Blog for news about Kiki, Java Kanji Flashcards, and the state of Kanji tools and sites on the web in general.

I had forgotten about the original, framed version of the dictionary. You may find it easier to get started this way.

Due to excessive bandwidth charges from my ISP, I have temporarily taken the downloadable version of Kiki's dictionary offline. If you really feel you need it, please ask kiki at kanjidict dot com. If you have written recently and did not get a response, please try this new address. Your mail may have gotten lost in all the spam sent to the old address.

Instructions

First of all, your browser needs to be able to display Japanese. I suggest you use a modern browser, like Firefox:

Or, check out Jim Breen's advice on browsing in Japanese.
Why? All of the following links are to Japanese pages, including some shortcuts for the demo:

  1. Kanji entry for cloud
  2. Index of kanji with the rain radical
  3. Brief radical index of all 214 radicals (23K)
  4. Large Kanji Index by radical (199K)
  5. Huge Kanji List in no special order (637K)
  6. Try starting with the radical index and your kanji is just a few clicks away.
  7. You can try a Google search form to start.

The current demo has 19,366 compounds listed under 3,401 kanji entries. It only includes compounds with two kanji or less, and only KANJIDIC kanji that have a "classic" Nelson number as well as a compound in EDICT. The pages were generated automatically in a matter of minutes using a Java program I have written. (Writing the program did take a couple of weeks of my spare time. Please email kiki at kanjidict dot com if you want the Java source code.)

Kanji Entry Page

Here is picture of a sample Kanji page, showing some of the compounds with the kanji for "cloud".

Screenshot of Kanji entry for 'cloud', 96f2.html

Tips

  1. Click any kanji to jump to the page for that kanji
  2. Click any radical to jump to the page for that radical
  3. Click the radical "strokes" number to jump to the radicals index
  4. Click the < and > on radical pages to see other radicals
  5. The kanji are color coded into four groups: elementary, general use, for names, and rare. Note "rare" is a bit too broad right now. It includes many kanji that are familiar to most literate Japanese, in addition to some truly obscure ones.
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photos in Kanji More photos in Kanji

Radical Index

Each Kanji page includes a short list of radicals to the left. For example, the kanji for "cloud" above includes the radical for "rain", which has eight strokes. Clicking the rain radical shows all the kanj iin the dictionary that have the "rain" radical, as shown in this picture:

Screenshot of radical page for 'rain', r173.html

Indexes

Paper dictionaries don't have search boxes. Kiki's dictionary doesn't either. Traditional indexes can help you find kanji you are looking for. You can practice looking up characters while learning their radical and stroke counts.

Radicals Index

The 214 radicals are the building blocks for Kanji.
There is an index of radicals ordered by stroke count for all the radicals in the dictionary.
For example, the entry for "rain" and the other 8 stroke radicals looks like this:

Screenshot of entry for 'rain' in radicals.html

Kanji Index by Radical

There is also a large all kanji index in the dictionary, ordered by radical.
The entry for the "rain" radical in this index looks like this:

Screenshot of entry for 'rain' radical in radicals.html

Summary Index

There is also a large index with summaries of all the kanji in the dictionary.
If you're desperate, you can download it and then use your browser's search function to find kanji, readings, and meanings.

Search

You can try a Google search for kanji in Kiki's Kanji Dictionary.
The search results will open in a new window.

  1. For best results, search for specific kanji, such as
    (cutting and pasting work well)
  2. You can also search for english meanings such as rain
  3. Japanese readings are not romanized, so ame will not work, but あめ will.
  4. Note: Since rain is the name of a radical, you will also get all kanji that have the rain radical

Suggested results for some recent popular searches (click one to see the entry):
  1. love
  2. strength
  3. dragon

This search is for individual Kanji. If you can't read Japanese or are looking for a kanji translation, you might try asking Takanori Tomita.

You can also search for kanji in Jim Breen's original WWWJDIC Japanese-English Dictionary Server (this is the University of Virginia mirror, very fast!)

History

  1. Beta 1 Posted Wed Jun 23 16:30:15 JST 1999
  2. Beta 1 with Jim Breen's first corrections Fri Jun 25 09:49:16 JST 1999
  3. Beta 1 with Access-J added Thu Nov 18 20:40:17 CST 1999
  4. Framed version created Sun Mar 19 04:29:18 CST 2000
  5. Downloadable version by request Wed Jun 21 11:07:19 CST 2000
  6. Added frame version back Sun Jul 25 23:08:00 CST 2004
  7. Added Google AdSense Thu May 19 20:29:32 CST 2005
  8. Updated links Tue May 21 23:07:14 CST 2005
  9. Added counter Thu Jun 3 22:40:14 CST 2005
  10. Reformatted Source Tue Nov 15 20:44:44 CST 2005
  11. Added popular search terms Fri Dec 2 22:03:23 CST 2005

Any questions, comments, or suggestions about this HTML version should go to kiki at kanjidict dot com.