The jōyōkanji is the guide to kanji characters and their readings, announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the tōyō kanji, which was the initial list of secondary school-level kanji standardized after World War II. The list is not a comprehensive list of all characters and readings in regular use; rather, it is intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, as well as a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents. Due to the requirement that official government documents make use of only jōyō kanji and their readings, several rare characters are also included by dint of being a part of the Constitution of Japan, which was being written at the same time the original 1,850-character tōyō kanji list was compiled. The 2,136 kanji in the jōyō kanji consist of:
In 1981, the jōyō kanji replaced the tōyō kanji as the standardized list of common kanji. The differences between the two consisted of 95 additional characters, and the simplification of wikt:燈#Japanese as wikt:灯#Japanese. The 95 additional characters are as follows:
1931: The former jōyō kanji was revised and 1,858 characters were specified.
1942: 1,134 characters as standard jōyō kanji and 1,320 characters as sub-jōyō kanji were specified.
1946: The 1,850 characters of tōyō kanji were adopted by law "as those most essential for common use and everyday communication". This list included 881 'basic requirement' kanji for elementary school.
1981: The 1,945 characters of jōyō kanji were adopted, replacing the list of tōyō kanji.
2010: The list was revised on 30 November to include an additional 196 characters and remove 5 characters, for a total of 2,136. The amendment also made changes to the readings of kanji present in the previous jōyō kanji list. Twenty-eight kanji gained new readings, three kanji lost obscure readings and the kun'yomi of wikt:側#Japanese was changed from kawa to gawa. The 196 additional characters are:
The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry instructed teachers to start teaching the new characters in fiscal 2012, so that junior high school students would be able to read them and high school students would be able to write them. High schools and universities started using the characters in their entrance exams since the 2015 academic year.
