Word Character Counter

Japanese Character Counter

Count characters in Japanese text (文字数), with kanji, hiragana, katakana and romaji counted separately. See the total with and without spaces and how many 400-character manuscript pages it fills.

  • Kanji, hiragana, katakana
  • Runs in your browser
0 characters
Stays on this device

Character composition

How your text breaks down, as a share of what’s counted.

Kanji 0%
Hiragana 0%
Katakana 0%
Latin letters 0%
Other 0%

Word breaks

Where the counter splits your text into words. Highlighted pieces are counted as words.

    Word breaks appear here as you type.

    How to count characters in Japanese text

    Counting Japanese characters with this counter takes three steps.

    1. Paste your text

      Any mix of kanji, hiragana, katakana and romaji.

    2. Read the counts

      The total, the total without spaces, and each script are counted as you type.

    3. Check the length

      See how many 400-character genkō yōshi sheets your text fills.

    Example

    今日はいい天気ですね。 is 11 characters: 4 kanji, 6 hiragana and 1 punctuation mark.

    Try this sentence

    The Japanese scripts the counter separates

    Japanese text mixes three scripts, plus Latin letters, so the counter counts each one separately.

    • 漢

      Kanji

      Chinese-derived characters. Japan’s official list of common-use (jōyō) kanji has 2,136.

    • あ

      Hiragana

      46 basic characters, used for grammar and native words.

    • ア

      Katakana

      46 basic characters, used for foreign words and emphasis. The long-vowel mark ー counts here.

    • A

      Romaji and Latin letters

      Half-width and full-width letters, such as React or ＡＢＣ.

    How Japanese characters are counted (文字数)

    In Japanese, length is measured in characters (文字), not words, because Japanese is written without spaces. Every kanji, kana and punctuation mark counts as one character.

    • Total characters includes everything, including spaces and line breaks.
    • Without spaces leaves out spaces, including the full-width space (　), which is how most submission forms count.
    • Words are found with your browser’s Japanese dictionary, so particles such as は and を count as separate words.

    Genkō yōshi: the 400-character manuscript page

    Japanese school essays and many publishers measure length in genkō yōshi (原稿用紙) sheets: manuscript paper with a 20 × 20 grid, so 400 characters per sheet. An assignment of “原稿用紙3枚” means about 1,200 characters.

    The counter divides your character count (without line breaks) by 400. Real sheets use a few more squares, because a new paragraph starts on a new line and leaves the rest of the row empty.

    Japanese character counter FAQ

    How many characters are in Japanese?

    Hiragana and katakana have 46 basic characters each. Kanji number in the tens of thousands, but the official common-use list has 2,136, and most adults read around 2,000 to 3,000.

    How many words are in Japanese?

    Large dictionaries have hundreds of thousands of entries. Everyday conversation and reading use a few thousand words.

    Why does the counter separate romaji and kana?

    Romaji is Japanese written in Latin letters, and it’s counted with other Latin letters. Hiragana and katakana are counted in their own groups.

    Does the Japanese counter count spaces?

    The total includes spaces. “Without spaces” leaves out both normal and full-width spaces.

    Can I count very long Japanese texts?

    Yes. Everything runs in your browser, so long manuscripts are counted instantly and never uploaded.

    Sources and references

    1. Jōyō kanji, Wikipedia
    2. Genkō yōshi, Wikipedia

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