To become fluent in kanji, you'll need to learn around 2,000 basic Japanese kanjis used in media and everyday Japanese life. Don't panic; once you have the first 400-500 symbols down, the rest tend to follow smoothly. You really only need around 1,200 to read a newspaper or go to work.
3000 kanji nets someone “highly educated native speaker” status — think teacher, doctor, lawyer. 5000 kanji gets you nerd status — think professor or logomaniac.
If you manage to learn 1,000 kanji then you are no longer a beginner learner. A lot of people struggling with learning even 100 kanji. People are lucky to learn 100–500 kanji a year depending on time dedication level. So, by the time you learn those 1,000 kanji you will be probably 2 years into studying the language.
Because the JLPT N1 tests you on a lot of kanji and vocabulary, it is most efficient to memorize the kanji based on its usage rather than its individual meaning and pronunciation. Now, to be considered fluent in Japanese, you need to know 1,500 to 2,500 kanji — roughly N2 or N1 level.
Sure, if you want to read day-to-day japanese comfortably you need well over 2000 kanji, but even with “just” a thousand or so you can already do a lot, as long as you don't mind choosing easier reading material and looking up unknown kanji regularly.
You might be thinking that 500 kanji is a pretty solid amount, but with kanji it's kind of an all-or-nothing deal. Either you know them or you don't. Knowing only the most common kanji is certainly better than nothing, but if you can't read all the common-use characters, you're still illiterate.
This vocabulary corresponds with JLPT levels N3 / N2. About 10,000 words will give you a high level of competence. You will still need to look up a lot of words if you read a novel, but you will be able to get the gist of almost anything you read or hear.
There are 50,000 of them in the famous “Dai Kan-Wa Jiten” Japanese dictionary. Ordinary dictionaries include about 5,000 to 20,000. A person who knows kanji very well and could pass the “Kanji-Kentei 1st grade” qualification, would know about 6,000. In everyday life in Japan, about 3,000 are used.
The target number depends on your learning objectives. For example, if you want to be able to live comfortably in daily life in Japan, you should aim for about 1000 characters.
Native adults are said to be able to read twice as many as Joyo Kanji, which is 4,000–5,000. Writing ability depends on one's lifestyle even more than reading. And it changes day by day as it purely relies on one's memory.
Kanji Damage is a website where you can learn 1,700 kanji for free with mnemonics, and is known for its unapologetically casual writing style. Maybe a little too casual (and even a little offensive) for some people.
Kanji is not becoming obsolete, but Japanese people's relationship to kanji is. As handwriting becomes less and less common, in favour of writing on a PC or a mobile phone, a big majority of Japanese believe that their ability to write kanji has deteriorated as a result.
たいと(taito) is the most difficult Japanese Kanji on the record with a total of 84 strokes. It is formed by combining 3 雲 (くもkumo) with 3 龍 (りゅうRyuu). 雲 means cloud and 龍 means dragon in English.
To be considered fluent in Japanese, people often say that you need to learn around 2000 kanji. There are, for example, 2136 government-mandated joyo kanji that Japanese people are expected to know. Similarly, the N1 level of the JLPT exam wants you to know 2000 kanji.
The target number depends on your learning objectives. For example, if you want to be able to live comfortably in daily life in Japan, you should aim for about 1000 characters.
There isn't a fixed number of characters a proficient Japanese speaker needs to learn, but a basic set of 2,136 jōyō kanji is considered the bare minimum for functional literacy. At least a thousand characters on top of that are found in common everyday use, and many adults know a few thousand more.
It depends a lot on what one studies and how much time one spends with kanji (someone studying Japanese law will know more kanji than someone studying English), but a good estimate seems to be an extra 2000 kanji for the average university-educated Japanese person.
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