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Kanji Jōyō Jinmeiyō Hyōgai
Shinjitai 2127 ? 0
Kyūjitai 0 ? ?
Kokuji 9 16 0
Total 2136 863 ?

I wonder if the above table is the exact concept of the use of Kanji in Japanese language. Can you help me fill the table correctly if the concept is true? By shinjitai I mean the formal one not extended and by Kyūjitai I mean both traditional and simplified.

Aidin Azari
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    You're including things that have essentially had the same shape for their entire thousands-of-years existence in the shinjitai total? Not just things that were updated in the relatively recent Japanese reform of characters? – Leebo Jan 30 '21 at 11:27
  • No I just wanted to classify the concept of the terms used for kanji scope in Japanese society. Actually your confirmation that the table is true is more important to me than the numbers. @Leebo – Aidin Azari Jan 30 '21 at 12:36

1 Answers1

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Drawing a line between concepts that are directly opposite to each other might be helpful. In your single table, different classifications and concepts are mixed up, it might have more sense to have separated tables for each concern, where each table deals with one of such pair of opposite concepts. This would yield the following tables:

  • Shinjitai / Kyuujitai
  • Jōyō / Hyōgai
  • Kokuji / Kanji (where kanji means characters of Chinese origin, not the whole lot of kanji)
  • Jinmeiyō

That said, let's take a look at your numbers. I will answer only in regards of Jōyō, Jinmeiyō, Hyōgai and Kokuji categories. I will not look at Shinjitai and Kyūjitai. As Leebo pointed out, it would help if you clarify what you mean by Shinjitai and Kyūjitai as well as what you mean by "[confirmation that] the table is true is more important to me than the numbers" (as I see it, the table will be true as long as the numbers are correct).

For the answers below, I used KANJIDIC2 as the data source for kanji by doing queries in jisho.org.

Jōyō

  • Jisho.org returns 2136 results for Jōyō kanji, like your source.
  • Jisho.org returns 9 results for kanji that are both Jōyō and Kokuji, like your source.

Jinmeiyō

  1. Jisho.org returns 862 results instead of 863 for Jinmeiyō kanji, so it seems there's a little discrepancy with your source.
  2. Jisho.org returns 16 results for kanji that are both Jinmeiyō and Kokuji, like your source.

Kokuji

  • Jisho.org returns 9 results for kanji that are both Jōyō and Kokuji, like your source.
  • Jisho.org returns 16 results for kanji that are both Jinmeiyō and Kokuji, like your source.
  • However, Jisho.org returns 164 results for Kokuji kanji! this means that there are (164 - 16) = 155 Kokuji kanji that fall into the Hyōgai category, which is a remarkable difference with your source.

Hyōgai

If Hyōgai kanji are "non-jōyō kanji; kanji outside the common-use kanji list" (see this definition), then the Hyōgai column in your table is not providing new information and you can figure it out directly from the Jōyō column, provided you know how many kanji are there in total, by calculating (Total - Jōyō) for each row.

I didn't find a way to get the total count of kanji in Jisho.org, but anyway the total amount of existing kanji depends on the authoritative source you look at.

Updated table

All in all, and disregarding Shinjitai and Kyuujitai kanji, the updated table (updates shown in bold) looks like this:

Kanji Jōyō Jinmeiyō Hyōgai
Kokuji 9 16 Total - 9
Total 2136 862 Total - 2136
jarmanso7
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  • Everything was perfect except that the definition of Hyōgai​ in your reference is different from what you considered here, as they "are Japanese kanji outside the two major lists Jōyō ... and Jinmeiyō". @jarmanso7 – Aidin Azari Jun 14 '21 at 06:14
  • I see. I referred to the first entry (1.) of the link I posted: "Hyōgai are Japanese kanji outside the common-use kanji list", which is just another way to say the Jōyō (常用, where 常 is "common" and 用 is "use") and only the Jōyō list, not the Jinmeiyō. I didn't realise that the wikipedia entry (2.) states something different. The term Jōyōgai unequivocally means "Kanji outside the Jōyō list". – jarmanso7 Jun 14 '21 at 07:11
  • @Aidin Azari I posted a new question asking about Jinmeiyō and Hyōgai here. – jarmanso7 Jun 14 '21 at 07:29