About Kanji Decipher
Kanji Decipher is a free lookup tool for the 2,136 jōyō kanji — the set taught through Japanese schooling. Search any character (or an English meaning, or a reading) and you get its component breakdown, its meanings and on’yomi / kun’yomi readings, an animated stroke-order diagram, common words that use it, related kanji, and a short plain-language account of how the shape came to carry the meaning.
It exists because that last part — the origin story — is usually the hard bit to find. Stroke order and readings are everywhere; a one-paragraph explanation of why 明 is a sun beside a moon, or that the 青 in 清 is a sound hint rather than a meaning, is not. Kanji Decipher pulls the structural data from open datasets (KanjiVG, KANJIDIC2, JMdict, KRADFILE — see the credits) and pairs each character with a generated, plain-English etymology so the whole picture sits on one page.
It’s a reference, not a course: no accounts, no lessons, no quizzes, no progress tracking. The origin explanations are machine-generated and may contain errors — each kanji page notes whether its story has been human-reviewed.