Browse by the radical's stroke count, or go directly to its number. Select any Tensho form to see the characters indexed under that radical.
Browse Tensho radical
Go to a known radical
Ready.
Radical itself
Extract from KANJIDIC2
Additional characters from CODH
How the Tensho Dictionary works
Why there are so many images
Tensho (seal script) does not give each character just one fixed appearance. This dictionary brings together KANJIDIC2, with 13,108 kanji records, and CODH, with 151,720 indexed images for 13,025 character entries. Only 8,392 characters occur in both sources; the combined index covers 17,741 distinct characters. This limited overlap adds to the complexity of the search. One character can have many recorded forms or examples: some have hundreds of images. Finding the form you need may take a little exploration.
This dictionary is designed for Japanese kanji. Simplified Chinese is not indexed as a separate writing system.
Start with a radical
As in a paper kanji dictionary, first identify the radical. Browse the radicals by the stroke count of their standard form, or go directly to a known radical number. A radical can itself have several Tensho forms, which may look different from the standard shape. Select one to see its own images, the KANJIDIC2 characters classified under it, and additional CODH characters.
Explore a character's forms
Switch between Kanji and Tensho at the top. In Tensho mode, Show all kanji lists the characters with one image preview when available. Click an image to see all its indexed Tensho images. You can also search directly by kanji or Unicode code point. The number of images reflects the documented indexed examples, not a stroke count or a number of different characters.
Sources & Licenses
KANJIDIC2 — EDRDG
Japanese kanji readings, meanings and related dictionary information are derived from KANJIDIC2, copyright James William Breen and the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG).
License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Tensho glyph images are derived from the 篆書字体データセット (Tensho Glyph Dataset), processed and published by CODH / DHII from multiple source books and institutions.
This application currently indexes TE00001–TE00021 and TE00024–TE00039. Licensing remains source-specific; consult the official CODH source list when publishing or adding datasets.