I’m learning kanji by Jouyou level by using a combination of the [Kanji Study app,](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en_CA&gl=US) and a very useful old DS game called [Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kaiteiban](https://www.amazon.com/Nazotte-Oboeru-Renshuu-Kaiteiban-Nintendo-DS/dp/B00307TD30) and I have just completed level 9/Sec 3. The two of them were matching up to level 9/Sec 3, but the DS game has a level 10 which includes 466 kanji, and Kanji Study has no Sec 4, but it has “Advanced” which includes 196 kanji.
The two lists don’t match and now I’m not sure how to continue. I can’t find a list online of what is included in level 10. I could make myself a list in Kanji Study of the 466 kanji seen in the level 10 of the DS game but it would take a long time.
I guess my question is: what are the jouyou kanji that are still useful to learn after level 9/ Sec 3? Actually, is it even still jouyou passed level 9/sec 3? The info I found is inconsistent. I only had a quick look at level 10 in the game and it seems to include a lot of archaic and jinmeiyou kanji so I’m not sure it’s worth my time. But at the same time, the “Advanced” list seem to be missing some kanji I see often but haven’t studied yet. Does any one know if “level 10” and “advanced” are still considered jouyou kanji or am I looking at something extra? Or is there a list of what is still worth learning after 9/sec 3 ?
5 comments
You might want to specify your goal, as “useful” really depends on that. Reading a given native material without dictionaries is JIS第一水準 and some of 第二水準漢字, but that’s usually overkill with rather diminished returns (compared to stuff like grammar) for non-natives I think.
Joyo kanji is an official [list](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B8%B8%E7%94%A8%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7) kept by the Japanese government of kanji most common and necessary to function as a productive member of the society. The list has 2136 kanji as of 2010. This was an update from the 1981 and original version of 1945 kanji. If you want to read a newspaper in Japanese, you need to know all of these kanji. If you want to write in kanji at the level of a native speaker who has gone on to some sort of a post-secondary education, you should practise to write all joyo kanji. I think 漢検2級 is roughly equivalent to “perfect in joyo kanji.”
JIS第一水準 includes all the joyo kanji and another thousand 人名漢字, which are kanji used for names but not common nouns/verbs/adjectives etc.
Any private entity calling a specific kanji “advanced” or “basic” do so completely at their prerogative, and these labels are in no way official or universal. For example, I think the English word “make” is pretty “basic” but that’s just my subjective and arbitrary opinion and has no official basis.
I could tell you if there are any not worth learning after the section you’re talknig about, if I had a list of what was in each section.
Of the 2136 Jouyou Kanji, there’s maybe 50-60 tops that I would say I encounter so rarely that I have trouble remembering them. So, chances are, *most* of the later Kanji are ones you should know, if not nearly all.
Also, you seem to be discounting Jinmeiyouas ones you don’t need to know: **That’s incorrect.** The Jouyou and Jinmeiyou lists are for government purposes: They approximate but don’t quite perfectly match real life. There are many Jinmeiyou Kanji that are used all the time. There are even some Hyougai (Not in either list) Kanji that are basically required.
I’m not saying you should look up a list and brute force stuff as that’s a bad idea anyway. Lots of them are obscure terms or name-specific Kanji with a billion readings. But if you look up a Kanji and it’s labeled “Jinmeiyou” don’t go “Oh I don’t have to learn it.” I mean, heck, **嘘** is Hyougai. Freakin’ 嘘. Blows my mind, can’t go 2 pages in a novel without seeing it.
If you want to be a proficient reader of Japanese, you need to go way beyond the Joyo kanji.
It’s just that studying from an app is an inefficient method. Every kanji you encounter organically in stuff you’re reading is worth being learned.
Japanese People have basically no idea of whether something is Joyo or not because every person needs to know to read peoples names and place and so many of those are not Joyo that there is simply no reason to worry about what is Joyo and what is not
The real advantage to something like RTK is that you learn things like 澤口 when you are learning similar kanji, instead of having to memorize it from scratch with you first encounter it
Not that that particular example is useful as it is not in RTK!