Saturday, May 20, 2017

names - Which kanji has the greatest number of strokes?


What is the most complex kanji (in terms of number of strokes), whether or not it's actually used often?



Answer



That really depends what you mean by "kanji". Remember that kanji are derived from Chinese characters of which there are not a defined number.


The 常用 (general use) kanji set is the one prescribed for education in schools and treated as a "safe" list to use in newspapers and other publications. The 常用 kanji with the most strokes is currently (as noted by atlantiza), with 29 strokes. However according to the usage stats given by KanjiDic2 it is not one of the 2500 most used kanji in newspapers, so while it's taught in school it would be likely be considered as a "tricky" kanji.


The 常用 kanji that does feature in the 2500 most-used by newspapers is , which KanjiDic2 places at the 1391st most commonly used kanji in newspapers, basically meaning all literate Japanese will know it.


Outside of general use it's a lot less difficult to define, as there are many classical kanji that very few people would know today, so the "one with the most strokes" really just depends on how much you want to search. For example, in KanjiDic2 it appears to be , with 34 strokes. This is not a widely-used kanji and much less likely to be recognised by the average person.



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