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“You know a lot of big words.” — Determining Shigeo’s Kanji Literacy

An analysis in four parts:

Jouyou kanji and Japan’s compulsory education system, explained.

An introduction to the analysis—what I did and why I did it.

A presentation of data, evidence, and counterarguments.

The truth revealed: can Shigeo write a reasonable amount of kanji for his age group?

Jouyou kanji and Japan’s compulsory education system, explained

Let us begin this analysis by establishing a basic understanding of how Japan’s education system is structured.

As you may already know, only elementary school and middle school are compulsory in Japan, meaning that high school and college are completely optional. Therefore, compulsory education in Japan consists of grades 1-9, with grades 1-6 being 小学校 (primary school) and grades 7-9 being 中学校 (middle school).

The term 「常用漢字」(jouyou kanji, “Daily-Use Kanji”) refers to a list of 2136 kanji that the Japanese Ministry of Education requires be taught throughout education grades in Japan due to their importance and frequency of use in Japanese daily life. Knowing all 2136 is defined by the Japanese government as the baseline for basic, functional literacy in Japanese. The jouyou kanji list is further divided into two sub-categories: 「教育漢字」(kyouiku kanji, “Education Kanji”) and 「中学・高校漢字」(chuugaku • koukou kanji, “Secondary School Kanji”).

教育漢字 (kyouiku kanji, “Education Kanji”) (A.K.A. 学年別漢字配当表 [gakunenbetsu kanji haitouhyou, “list of kanji by school year”]) is the Japanese term for the 1006 kanji that are taught over the 6 years of primary school in Japan, grouped into different grade levels by difficulty and complexity.

「中学・高校漢字」(chuugaku • koukou kanji, “Secondary School Kanji”) is the term for the 1130 kanji that students are expected to learn throughout middle school and high school. This list of kanji is not strictly divided by grade level, though a general grade level is often provided, because students in secondary school—whether it be middle or high—are expected to learn kanji more independently. Though the responsibility of learning these kanji is shifted from the classroom to the individual, the importance of knowing these kanji by the end of one’s education, if that be middle school or high school, cannot be overstated. Once again, these 2136 kanji are considered the basics of Japanese kanji fluency.

According to the “Kanji Frequency Number Survey/漢字頻度数調査” conducted by the National Cultural Affairs Division in 2000, in 385 books published by a major publishing company, 8474 different kanji were used (not including duplicates). However, speakers are able to understand 99% of them if they know the top 2457 kanji, and 99.9% of them if they know the top 4208 kanji. And as is true for speakers of every other language, people can generally read more words than they can write.

I determined the “grade level” of each kanji in this analysis according to the grade level provided in my Japanese-English dictionaries, but consideration will be made for Secondary School Kanji due to the lack of official grade divisions and the less organized circumstances involved with learning them.

An introduction to the analysis—what I did and why I did it

In this analysis, I focused specifically on Shigeo’s ability to write kanji, not to read them. This is most obviously because it’s much harder to determine whether or not someone can actually read something, especially in anime, without it being explicitly mentioned. However, it is also because the meaning of kanji can be inferred from knowing the meaning of radicals, and as mentioned above, it is common for people to be able to read more words than they can write. The true mark of knowing a kanji is being able to write it.

To determine Shigeo’s kanji-writing ability, I studied screenshots from a few scenes from the anime, specifically a couple of scenes from the Reigen OVA where Shigeo is writing a LOT, and a couple scenes from the regular anime where Shigeo is explicitly seen writing stuff down and the audience is shown the writing.

The data has been organized into two different excel charts—one for kanji he uses correctly, and one for kanji he doesn’t know or messes up. The kanji in each of these charts have been color-coded and organized by grade level, with readings, translations, and explanations provided. There is only one kanji in the entire analysis that is not considered a part of the jouyou kanji, and this kanji has been marked by “N/A” in the grade level section.

I will provide each chart alongside a percentage likelihood that Mob will know any given kanji from each grade level based on the information gathered from the anime. Please note that the sample size is obviously limited, but I’m working with what I have. If there is a kanji with some sort of detail worth consideration, I’ve marked it with a (**) in the chart and will explain below.

Lastly, I included kanji used in names in the chart here after some deliberation. Name kanji are tricky in general, because multiple kanji share the same pronunciation and people usually don’t know what kanji are used in someone’s name unless they are shown by that person (unless it’s some crazy common name like 高田 or 森 or 田中).

A presentation of data, evidence, and counterarguments.

Shigeo’s known kanji:

Shigeo’s unknown kanji:

IMPORTANT NOTE: There are one or two instances of Shigeo NOT using a kanji at all that I’ve decided not to include on the chart. This is because it is common for Japanese speakers to omit kanji for super common verbs and write them in kana instead, either for personal style reasons or for convenience. Since the verbs are so fundamental and commonly-used, it’s unlikely that they will be misunderstood or mistaken for another word if written in kana. So, if Shigeo wrote the verb for “to read” or “to eat” without using kanji, I didn’t include it, as I highly highly highly doubt he doesn’t know those kanji and I felt like it would unfairly skew the results against him.

米** = I don’t blame Shigeo for not knowing this kanji. It’s fair to assume that Mob might not have seen Mezato’s name written out and therefore wouldn’t know which kanji to use. On TOP of that, “me” for 米 is a special nanori (used for names only) reading and is super obscure and uncommon. I couldn’t even find it in my name dictionary by searching “Mezato”, I had to find her name written in kanji in S1E3 and go from there. I wouldn’t expect this kanji to be in anyone’s top ten possible kanji guesses for the “me” in “mezato”. I included it because rules are rules, but wanted to mention this to make it fairer on the boy.

世** = I want to make it known that Shigeo does successfully write this kanji in the image shown here, when he writes 「世紀」(century):

HOWEVER. However. He messed it up SO BAD before that I think it actually overpowers him using it correctly and brings it back around to a “not properly known” kanji, especially because it’s a kanji taught in second grade that he shouldn’t be messing up at all:

The subtitles intersect it but I’ve rewritten what Shigeo wrote there at the bottom. He tried to write 「世の中には」”In the world…”, but tried to write the kanji, messed up, crossed it out, and then rewrote it in kana. Didn’t even try to write it a second time. This is egregious and, in my juror’s power, cancels out his later usage. This would be like misspelling “world” in English. I’m willing to entertain arguments that he just wanted to write it in kana for some reason, but as it is now, I don’t think that excuse is compelling enough against such damning evidence, so in “missed kanji” it goes. (It’s partly cut off but what gets me is that it doesn’t even look wrong in the first place lol but if he crossed it out, it means he didn’t know it well enough, which allowed him to doubt, which is still damning enough.)

造** = Just like above, Shigeo actually does successfully use this kanji once in the show when he’s filling out his paperwork for the Body Improvement Club in S1E2 (forgive my awful kanji, it’s hard to draw on the phone lol):

However, that was not only on an official school document, it was also in the presence of a student council member and Saruta (#2 in the grade lol) so I have to assume he either asked someone for help or got corrected. Either way, the instance where he doesn’t use the kanji is when he’s in his bedroom alone, writing in his personal notebook—a much more casual environment, and one that takes place AFTER s1e2 (can’t argue he learned it):

This leads me to believe that Shigeo does not naturally know the kanji, as he can’t reproduce it in casual day-to-day or when alone.

焉** = This kanji is not only not included in the jouyou kanji, but it is also used in an obscure word. In fact, it took me a minute to locate it in my Japanese-English dictionary app. It is absolutely not reasonable to expect Shigeo to know this kanji off the top of his head, and he probably wouldn’t know it even if he were a kanji ace. It is included and working against him, however, because the kanji he initially tried to write in its place was 「円」, a.k.a. the kanji for YEN/¥:

Sure, 「えん」is a reading for「円」, that part makes sense. But 「終焉」means “the finals years in one’s life”, so I’m really struggling to understand why Mob would think the yen money kanji would be a part of that word and why he would try to write it with that kanji instead of just writing it in kana first, like the majority of the kanji he didn’t know. It’s truly an enigma to me. I’m bewildered he even tried that, and for that, I’m holding it against him.

BASIC STATS:

GRADE 1 KANJI:

- Total known: 17

- Total unknown: 0

- Grand total: 17

- Shigeo knows: 17 out of 17

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 1 kanji: 100%

GRADE 2 KANJI:

- Total known: 16

- Total unknown: 3

- Grand total: 19

- Shigeo knows: 16 out of 19

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 2 kanji: 84.2%

GRADE 3 KANJI:

- Total known: 13

- Total unknown: 6

- Grand total: 19

- Shigeo knows: 13 out of 19

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 3 kanji: 68.4%

GRADE 4 KANJI:

- Total known: 11

- Total unknown: 0

- Grand total: 11

- Shigeo knows: 11 out of 11

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 4 kanji: 100%

(Baby apparently had a great year in fourth grade.)

GRADE 5 KANJI:

- Total known: 3

- Total unknown: 4

- Grand total: 7

- Shigeo knows: 3 out of 7

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 5 kanji: 43.9%

GRADE 6 KANJI:

- Total known: 0

- Total unknown: 2

- Grand total: 2

- Shigeo knows: 0 out of 2

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 6 kanji: 0%

😭

GRADE 7 KANJI:

(No known or unknown 7th grade kanji found)

GRADE 8 KANJI

- Total known: 5

- Total unknown: 6

- Grand total: 11

- Shigeo knows: 5 out of 11

- Percentage likelihood of Shigeo knowing a grade 8 kanji: 45.5%

^ To Shigeo’s credit, this isn’t bad at all considering he’s only halfway through his eight grade year at this point in the story.

% OF JOUYOU KANJI SHIGEO KNOWS:

% known from observed data:

65/86

75.6%

# of jouyou kanji: 2136

75.6% of 2136 = 1615 jouyou kanji

Here’s a graph for your visualizing pleasure:

Finally:

(All values are rounded up)

There are 1006 kyouiku kanji. There are 1130 secondary school kanji. Because high school in Japan is not compulsory, we’ll assume that the secondary kanji are to be learned over the three years of middle school. That means about 377 words per middle school grade. If Shigeo is halfway through eighth grade, let’s say he should generally know 1006 + 377 + (377/2) kanji, which comes out to 1,572.

There are 80 kyouiku kanji assigned to first grade, which Shigeo should know 100% of—80 total.

There are 160 kyouiku kanji assigned to second grade, which Shigeo should know 84.2% of—135 total.

There are 200 kanji assigned to third grade, which Shigeo should know 68.4% of—137 total.

There are 200 kanji assigned to fourth grade, which Shigeo should know 100% of—200 total.

There are 185 kanji assigned to fifth grade, which Shigeo should know 43.9% of—81 total.

There are 181 kanji assigned to sixth grade, which Shigeo should know… 0% of…. 0 total.

This all totals out to:

80 + 135 + 137 + 200 + 81 + 0 = 633/1006 elementary school-level kanji. That’s 63% of the kanji required for elementary school.

(Didn’t include a calculation for middle school kanji due to having 0 data on seventh-grade kanji and also him being halfway through eighth.)

The truth revealed: can Shigeo write a reasonable amount of kanji for his age group?

Uh… no. Maybe? Well… probably not, no.

I mean, of course there are flaws with my methods. I had a super small sample group and applied the stats there to all of the jouyou kanji, which is almost guaranteed to be lower than reality. I just didn’t really have another choice. Also, I’m very certain that Shigeo MUST know some 6th grade kanji, even if in the results here I considered the probability to be 0%. That’s assuredly not accurate. There were just, by chance, only two instances of sixth-grade kanji in all of the sample writing and he happened not to know either of them. This is just for fun, anyway. I can say with confidence, though, that he certainly isn’t a writer, and he definitely knows less kanji than the average eighth grader, but I wouldn’t take my numbers for anything more than entertainment.

But yeah. Shigeo is…. a little kanji-impaired. Which explains why he struggled with Emi’s writing and is only ever seen reading Shounen Jump volumes lmao. I believe in him though. He makes it work. My illiterate king. Who needs the other half of your elementary sight-words anyway?

All jokes aside though, he really started to scare me with the 世 and 円 things 😭😭😭😭😭

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