Which kanji has the greatest number of strokes?


What is the most complex kanji (in terms of number of strokes), whether or not
it's actually used often?




That really depends what you mean by "kanji". Remember that kanji are derived
from Chinese characters of which there are not a defined number.

The 常用 (general use) kanji set is the one prescribed for education in schools
and treated as a "safe" list to use in newspapers and other publications. The
常用 kanji with the most strokes is currently
[鬱](http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E9%AC%B1) (as noted by atlantiza), with 29
strokes. However according to the usage stats given by KanjiDic2 it is not one
of the 2500 most used kanji in newspapers, so while it's taught in school it
would be likely be considered as a "tricky" kanji.

The 常用 kanji that **does** feature in the 2500 most-used by newspapers is
[鑑](http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E9%91%91), which KanjiDic2 places at the
1391st most commonly used kanji in newspapers, basically meaning all literate
Japanese will know it.

Outside of general use it's a lot less difficult to define, as there are many
classical kanji that very few people would know today, so the "one with the
most strokes" really just depends on how much you want to search. For example,
in KanjiDic2 it appears to be [䯂](http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E4%AF%82),
with 34 strokes. This is not a widely-used kanji and much less likely to be
recognised by the average person.




That really depends what you mean by "kanji". Remember that kanji are derived
from Chinese characters of which there are not a defined number.

The 常用 (general use) kanji set is the one prescribed for education in schools
and treated as a "safe" list to use in newspapers and other publications. The
常用 kanji with the most strokes is currently
[鬱](http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E9%AC%B1) (as noted by atlantiza), with 29
strokes. However according to the usage stats given by KanjiDic2 it is not one
of the 2500 most used kanji in newspapers, so while it's taught in school it
would be likely be considered as a "tricky" kanji.

The 常用 kanji that **does** feature in the 2500 most-used by newspapers is
[鑑](http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E9%91%91), which KanjiDic2 places at the
1391st most commonly used kanji in newspapers, basically meaning all literate
Japanese will know it.

Outside of general use it's a lot less difficult to define, as there are many
classical kanji that very few people would know today, so the "one with the
most strokes" really just depends on how much you want to search. For example,
in KanjiDic2 it appears to be [䯂](http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E4%AF%82),
with 34 strokes. This is not a widely-used kanji and much less likely to be
recognised by the average person.

