Chapter 1 – Graphemes
What Are Graphemes?
Kanji are made up of smaller parts — visual pieces that repeat over and over in different combinations. In this course, we call these pieces graphemes. They are like the building blocks of kanji.
Learning to spot them gives you an edge — they help you break down unfamiliar kanji and make smart guesses about their meaning.
This page introduces the graphemes for Chapter 1 — each one appears in at least one kanji you'll learn this chapter.
This grapheme appears on the left side of a kanji. You can imagine 亻as a stylized image of a MAN wearing a wide-brimmed hat and looking up to the right. Once you see it, you’ll start noticing it everywhere — it shows up in kanji that have to do with people and human actions.
This simple vertical stroke represents a STICK. Sometimes the stick has a hook at the bottom, like this: 亅.
This grapheme is a simple square shape that represents a BOX or an OPENING.
When you see 口 inside other kanji, think of it as a general BOX / OPENING that can hold meaning depending on the context.
This grapheme looks like a pair of LEGS walking. The first leg is extended behind the body, and the second leg is reaching forward to take the next step.
How are graphemes different from radicals? (optional read)
You’ve probably heard the word radical before. Radicals are a specific system used in dictionaries to index kanji, and every kanji has exactly one of them.
But when learning kanji, focusing only on radicals can be limiting — many important recurring parts aren’t radicals at all.
Graphemes are different: they include all reusable visual pieces that contribute to a kanji’s meaning or shape, regardless of whether they’re officially considered radicals.
Why we say “graphemes” here (optional read)
In linguistics and writing-system studies, grapheme means the smallest meaningful written symbol in a script, like a phoneme in sound. In this course, we adapt that idea for kanji study. Grapheme isn’t the standard term in Japanese pedagogy — you’ll usually see words like “components” or “elements.” We’ve chosen it because many textbooks casually use “components” to mean radicals, which leads to overlap and confusion. By defining radicals as the dictionary indexing piece (one per kanji) and graphemes as any recurring visual piece, we aim to keep the distinction clear and make kanji structure easier to grasp.