JLPT N1 Kanji List
All 1232 kanji on the JLPT N1 list, ordered by frequency. Search by character, reading, or English meaning. Tap any character to expand its readings, stroke count and example words; characters with a full study guide link straight to it.
1232 kanji
Studying JLPT N1 kanji
N1 covers the long tail — rare, literary and specialised kanji you'll mostly have met only in reading. There are well over a thousand, so trying to memorise them cold is the wrong strategy.
How to approach them
- Learn N1 kanji from the texts you read, not from a bare list — context is what makes them stick.
- Lean on components and phonetic hints to guess readings of characters you haven't formally studied.
- Prioritise the ones that actually recur in the material you care about (news, novels, your field).
N1 rewards years of reading; treat this list as a reference, not a memorisation target.
How N1 kanji show up on the test
At N1 the character set is enormous and heavily weighted toward rare, literary and specialised words, so exhaustive memorisation is the wrong goal. Learning to read confidently from context — leaning on radicals and phonetic components to infer unfamiliar characters — is what actually carries you through the reading section.
Practice readings in the kanji drills, or take a free N1 mock test.