What is a kanji stroke count?

The stroke count is the number of distinct pen movements needed to write a character in standard handwriting. It is fixed by convention for each kanji and is used to order characters in dictionaries and to teach correct writing.

Which kanji does this tool cover?

It includes a curated table of common JLPT N5 through N1 kanji — the characters most learners encounter first. Any kanji not in the table is listed as unknown rather than guessed, so the counts you see are reliable.

How are stroke counts decided?

Stroke counts follow the standard taught in Japanese schools and recorded in references like Kanjidic. A single continuous movement — even one that changes direction, like the corner of 口 — counts as one stroke.

Does it count kana or punctuation?

No. Hiragana, katakana, Latin letters, numbers, and punctuation are skipped. Only CJK kanji characters are looked up and counted, so a sentence's total reflects kanji-writing effort only.

No. The lookup table is bundled with the page and runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent to a server.

Japanese Kanji Stroke Count Reference

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This tool reads any Japanese text and reports the stroke count of every kanji it contains, using a built-in lookup table of common JLPT kanji. Stroke count is the number of pen movements a character takes to write by hand — a fixed property used to teach handwriting and to order kanji in dictionaries. Paste a sentence and see each kanji’s count plus a running total.

How it works

The tool scans your text character by character. For each character it checks whether the code point falls in the CJK Unified Ideographs range and whether it appears in the bundled table:

Recognised kanji → shown with its stroke count.
Kana, Latin, digits, punctuation → skipped entirely.
Kanji outside the table → listed as “unknown” rather than guessed.

A stroke is one continuous movement of the brush or pen. Crucially, a movement that changes direction is still one stroke — the box 口, for example, is written in just three strokes, not four, because the top and right sides are drawn in a single cornering motion.

Example and notes

Paste 日本語 and you get 日 (4) + 本 (5) + 語 (14) = 23 strokes. The grass radical, the enclosure of 口, and other “corner” shapes are the usual surprises: they look like several lines but count as one stroke each. Because the table is curated for accuracy, rarer or name kanji may show as unknown — that is intentional, so you never see a fabricated number.