I looked this up on the internet, but I couldn't find an answer. I figured someone here would know. I know most kanji are either in the simplified character set or the traditional character set of Chinese. If you can read both a Taiwanese and Beijing newspaper, then you also have a general idea of most of the Japanese kanji as well. How many kanji are 100% unique to Japanese?

For example: 图， 圖， (I don't know how to type the Japanese kanji, but it is different.)

I don't have a list. The following are just some those that I can think of at this moment. 辻 峠 躾 働 畑. Probably there are some more.

RTK 2 chapter 4 gives the characters without Chinese readings on-yomi, out of them only 5 are pure Japanese.
畑（はたけ）
枠（わく）
辻（つじ）
峠（とうげ）
込む （こむ）

Their could be some more that Heisig didn't teach or are in book 3 (I have looked at it very closely).

枠 is probably a variant of 椊, since 卆 is a variant of 卒. Also, the Japanese way of writing the Chinese character 醉 is 酔.

That makes sense, by the way what does your avatar's kanji mean?

It means it's meaningless trying to learn the most complicated character. There exists an infinity of them.

That's some profound advice.

Japanese-only kanji (as opposed to stylistic variations on existing hanzi) are called kokuji ("national characters"). Wikipedia has some more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuji#Kokuji

Now I know the name of that type of character. I have somewhere to start looking. Also, you three already answered most of my questions.


"There are hundreds of kokuji in existence.Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly used components of the written Japanese language."


Merely hundreds? heh. If I ever go for a fourth language, the kanji won't be that bad for me. Learning two pronunciations for each kanji will be irritating, but oh well.

Thanks, everyone.