Is knowing Kanji vital?


I'm, as a beginner, pretty bad with Kanji. I've heard that even some native
japanese are. Is it really necessary to get the hang of it to be able to
read/write in Japanese?




At the basic day-to-day level, there are several components of “knowing”
kanji.

## 1. Identifying visually

There is no way to understand written Japanese if you cannot identify a kanji
and decipher its meaning. But, you can get away with not knowing how to
pronounce it, i.e. generate the hiragana equivalent.

## 2. Choosing the correct one

When writing a word you know orally, even when typing with an IME, you will
still have to know which kanji matches the word. So many words have
homophones, like the English _to_ , _too_ , and _two_. Is it 箸{はし}
(chopsticks), 端{はし} (edge), or 橋{はし} (bridge) ? You will have to know if
you're going to communicate in written Japanese.

## 3. Reproducing by hand

This is usually what natives means when they say they're “bad at kanji”. They
have no problem with all other components of “knowing” kanji — they just can't
reproduce the characters correctly from memory. Of course this is exacerbated
by the overwhelming use of computers/smartphones. It's like being a bad
speller. You can definitely get away with this.

Here is the problem immortalized in this fun song,
「[漢字読めるけど書けない](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efy25Txzg9s&t=2m23s) (I Can
Read Kanji, But Writing, Not So Much)」.

