ronantakizawa/japanese-character-difficulty

Japanese Character Difficulty Dataset

A comprehensive dataset of 3,003 Japanese kanji characters with their educational difficulty grades, sourced from official Japanese educational standards and kanjiapi.dev.

Dataset Overview

• —Total Characters: 3,003 kanji
• —Source: Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) Joyo Kanji list + kanjiapi.dev
• —Coverage: Elementary grades 1-6, plus secondary education and advanced characters
• —Format: Character-grade pairs for easy lookup and analysis

Grade System

The dataset uses the Japanese educational grade system:

• —Grades 1-6: Elementary school kanji (Joyo Kanji for primary education)
• —Grade 8: Secondary school kanji (middle/high school level)
• —Grade 9: Advanced kanji (beyond standard education, JLPT levels, Jinmeiyō kanji)

Grade Distribution

Usage Examples

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the dataset
dataset = load_dataset("ronantakizawa/japanese-character-difficulty")
df = dataset['train'].to_pandas()

# Find elementary school kanji (grades 1-6)
elementary_kanji = df[df['grade'] <= 6]
print(f"Elementary kanji count: {len(elementary_kanji)}")

# Get all grade 1 kanji
grade1_kanji = df[df['grade'] == 1]['character'].tolist()
print(f"Grade 1 kanji: {''.join(grade1_kanji)}")

# Check difficulty of a specific character
char_grade = df[df['character'] == '漢']['grade'].iloc[0]
print(f"漢 is grade {char_grade}")

Applications

• —Language Learning: Curriculum design and progression planning
• —Text Analysis: Automatic difficulty assessment of Japanese texts
• —Educational Tools: Kanji learning applications and games
• —Research: Japanese language complexity studies

Data Quality

• —Sourced from official Japanese educational standards
• —Cross-referenced with kanjiapi.dev comprehensive database
• —Includes both Joyo (常用) and Jinmeiyō (人名用) kanji
• —Covers JLPT levels N5-N1 characters

Related Datasets

• —Japanese Text Difficulty Dataset - Full text analysis using this character data