What is a genko yoshi page?

Genko yoshi (原稿用紙) is the squared Japanese manuscript paper used for handwriting and publishing. The standard sheet has 20 columns and 20 rows, giving 400 squares per page, which is why 400 characters equals one manuscript page.

How are paragraphs counted?

A paragraph is a block of text separated from the next by a blank line. A single line break within a block counts as a soft wrap, not a new paragraph, matching how Japanese prose is typically structured.

What counts as a character?

For manuscript pages, every non-whitespace character occupies one square: kana, kanji, and full-width punctuation each count as one. Whitespace is not counted, in line with how genko yoshi pages are filled.

Why 400 characters per page?

The 400字詰原稿用紙 (400-character manuscript sheet) is the publishing and contest standard in Japan. Editors and competitions quote length in manuscript pages, so 400 characters per page is the reliable planning figure.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. All counting runs in your browser with JavaScript. Nothing is sent to a server or stored, so the tool is safe for unpublished drafts and confidential work.

Japanese Paragraph Counter

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Japanese writers, students, and editors measure length in manuscript pages (原稿用紙) rather than words. This tool counts paragraphs and characters in Japanese text and converts the character count into genko yoshi pages using the standard 400-character-per-page sheet.

How it works

Paragraphs are found by splitting the text on blank lines: a run of one or more empty lines marks a paragraph boundary, while a single newline inside a block is treated as a soft wrap.

For the page estimate, every non-whitespace character counts as one square on the manuscript sheet — kana, kanji, and full-width punctuation alike. The page count is then:

pages = manuscript_characters / 400

400 comes from the 20×20 grid of the standard 400字詰原稿用紙 sheet.

Tips and notes

Because each punctuation mark and full-width symbol fills a square on real genko yoshi, the tool counts them too — this matches how an editor counts a submission. The separate “Japanese-script characters” figure (kana and kanji only) is shown for reference if you need a script-only count. For contest entries that quote a page limit, the 400-character page is the figure to plan against.