Kakikomi / Guides

How to look up a kanji when you don't know its reading

You can type any Japanese word whose reading you know. The trouble starts when you meet a character you can't read: then no keyboard helps. Here are the ways out, from slowest to fastest.

By Mael Gerhard · updated 3 October 2026

Why typing fails

Japanese input works through sound. You type かわ and pick 川 or 河 from a list. That is fine for words you know, but it turns a dictionary into a riddle: to look up a kanji you must already know how it is read.

Learners hit this wall constantly, because written Japanese is full of characters they have seen but never heard pronounced.

Option 1: search by radical

Every kanji is built from smaller parts. Traditional dictionaries file them under 214 radicals, and most lookup tools let you pick components and narrow the result by stroke count.

The kanji 猫 (cat), for example, is the animal radical 犭 plus 苗. Radical search is slow, but you learn how characters are built, and that pays off: parts repeat, and 苗 even hints at the reading, ビョウ. Use it when you have time and a steady screen.

Option 2: draw it

Handwriting recognition is usually the fastest way. You draw the character with a finger or a stylus and the tool offers candidates. Modern recognisers forgive wobbly proportions and often a wrong stroke order. A few habits help:

• Write large and use the whole canvas.
• Put components where they belong: left part left, top part top.
• If the right character is not among the candidates, add the stroke you skipped — candidates update as you write.
• Stroke order matters less than shape, but a normal order (top to bottom, left to right) helps the recogniser most.

Option 3: copy and paste

If the text is selectable — a web page, an e-book, a PDF — long-press the word and send it to a dictionary. You don't need the reading at all. This is the easy case, and most reading apps support it.

Option 4: read it off the screen

Manga, games, screenshots and photos of signs are pictures. The text in them cannot be selected. For these you need text recognition (OCR): the tool looks at the screen, finds the text and lets you pick a line. Vertical text, as in speech bubbles, is the hard part, so check that your tool handles it.

Remember it, don't just look it up

A lookup you don't keep is a lookup you will repeat tomorrow. For each new kanji, note three things:

• the on reading (from Chinese, used in compounds): ビョウ
• the kun reading (native Japanese, used on its own): ねこ
• one example word: 子猫（こねこ）, kitten

Then put it into a spaced-repetition deck. One kanji, one reading and one word is enough to start.

More guides:
Read Japanese on an Android tablet Understand grammar while reading