Abstract
This paper describes a Japanese logographic character (kanji) frequency list, which is based on an analysis of the largest recently available corpus of Japanese words and characters. This corpus comprised a full year of morning and evening editions of a major newspaper, containing more than 23 million kanji characters and more than 4,000 different kanji characters. This paper lists the 3,000 most frequent kanji characters, as well as an analysis of kanji usage and correlations between the present list and previous Japanese frequency lists. The authors believe that the present list will help researchers more accurately and efficiently control the selection of kanji characters in cognitive science research and interpret related psycholinguistic data.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Appleman, I. B., &Mayzner, M. S. (1981). The letter-frequency effect and the generality of familiarity effects on perception.Perception & Psychophysics,30, 436–446.
Cabeza, R. (1995). Investigating the mixture and subdivision of perceptual and conceptual processing in Japanese memory tests.Memory & Cognition,23, 155–165.
Carroll, J. B., Davies, P., &Richman, B. (1971).The American Heritage word frequency book. New York: American Heritage.
Coulmas, F. (1989).The writing systems of the world. Oxford: Blackwell.
Edwards, J. A. (1993). Survey of electronic corpora and related resources for language researchers. In J. A. Edwards & M. D. Lampert (Eds.),Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research (pp. 263–310). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Eko, R., &Nakamizo, S. (1989). Coded representations of kanji, kana and figures.Japanese Journal of Psychology,60, 265–268.
Flores d’Arcais, G. B., &Saito, H. (1993). Lexical decomposition of complex kanji characters in Japanese readers.Psychological Research,55, 52–63.
Flores d’Arcais, G. B., Saito, H., &Kawakami, M. (1995). Phonological and semantic activation in reading kanji characters.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 34–42.
Flores d’Arcais, G. B., Saito, H., Kawakami, M., &Masuda, H. (1994). Figural and phonological effects in radical migration with kanji characters.Advances in the Study of Chinese Language Processing,1, 241–254.
Goto, H. (1995). Gengo kenkyu no tame no data toshite no corpus no gainen ni tsuite [Corpus for linguistic research].Tohoku University Linguistics Journal,4, 71–87.
Grainger, J., &Jacobs, A. M. (1993). Masked partial-word priming in visual word recognition: Effects of positional letter frequency.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,19, 951–964.
Hatta, T., Koike, M., &Langman, P. (1994). Laterality of mental imagery generation and operation: Testing with brain-damaged patients and normal adults.Journal of Clinical & Experimental Neuropsychology,16, 577–588.
Hayashi, R. (1988). The role of semantic attributes of the distractor word in the script type effect on Stroop color-word interference task.Japanese Journal of Psychology,59, 1–8.
Hirose, H. (1992). An investigation of the recognition process for jukugo by use of priming paradigms.Japanese Journal of Psychology,63, 303–309.
Kess, J., &Miyamoto, T. (1994).Japanese psycholinguistics: A classified and annotated research bibliography. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Kikuchi, T. (1996). Detection of kanji words in a rapid serial visual presentation task.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,22, 332–341.
Kindaichi, K. (1991).shimeikai kokugo jiten [new japanese word dictionary]. Tokyo: Sanseido.
Kučera, H., &Francis, W. N. (1967).Computational analysis of presentday American English. Providence RI: Brown University Press.
Leech, G., &Fligelstone, S. (1992). Computers and corpus analysis. In C. S. Butler (Ed.),Computers and written texts (pp. 115–140). Oxford: Blackwell.
Matsunaga, S. (1996). The linguistic nature of kanji reexamined: Do kanji represent only meaning?Journal of the Association of Teaching of Japanese,30, 1–22.
Morikawa, Y. (1985). Stroop phenomena in the Japanese language: II. Effects of character-usage frequency and number of strokes. In H. S. R. Kao & R. Hoosain (Eds.),Linguistics, psychology & Chinese language (pp. 73–80). Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies.
Morohashi, T. (1989).Dai kanwa jiten [Japanese kanji character dictionary]. Tokyo: Taishuu-kan.
Morton, J., Sasanuma, S., Patterson, K., &Sakuma, N. (1992). The organization of the lexicon in Japanese: Single and compound kanji.British Journal of Psychology,83, 517–531.
Nagae, S. (1994). Semantic processing functions of kanji and kana words in the right hemisphere.Japanese Journal of Psychology,65, 144–149.
Naito, M., &Komatsu, S. (1988). Attributes of memory that mediate priming effects in perceptual identification.Japanese Journal of Psychology,58, 352–358.
Naito, M., &Komatsu, S. (1989). Effects of conceptually driven processing on perceptual identification.Japanese Psychological Research,31, 45–56.
Nakagawa, A. (1994). Visual and semantic processing in reading kanji.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,20, 864–875.
National Language Research Institute of Japan (1962).Gendai zasshi 90shi no yogo yoji [The total vocabulary and their written forms in ninety magazines of today]. Tokyo: Shuuei-sha.
National Language Research Institute of Japan (1976).A study of the use of Chinese characters in modern newspapers (The National Language Research Institute Report 56). Tokyo: Shuuei Shuppan.
National Language Research Institute of Japan (1997).Gendai zasshi 90shi no yogo yoji: FD format [The total vocabulary and their written forms in ninety magazines of today]. Tokyo: Sanseido.
Nichigai Associates, &Asahi [Newspaper] (1994).CD-HIASK’93. Tokyo: Kinokuniya.
Nozaki, H.,Chikamatsu, N., &Yokoyama, S. (1997).Compiling katakana frequency lists from Japanese newspaper corpus. Unpublished manuscript. Aichi University of Education, Nagoya.
Osaka, M. (1992). Effect of memory set-size upon event related potentials for concrete and abstract kanji stimuli.Perceptual & Motor Skills,75, 401–402.
Paradis, M., Hagiwara, H., &Hildebrandt, N. (1985).Neurolinguistic aspects of the Japanese writing system. New York: Academic Press.
Sakuma, N., Itoh, M., &Sasanuma, S. (1989). Recognition units of kanji words: Priming effects on kanji recognition.Japanese Journal of Psychology,60, 1–8.
Sasanuma, S., Sakuma, N., &Kitano, K. (1992). Reading kanji without semantics: Evidence from a longitudinal study of dementia.Cognitive Neuropsychology,9, 465–486.
Sekiguchi, H., &Abe, I. (1992). Functional hemisphere differences in recognition of words expressed in kanji.Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology,40, 315–322.
Shimomura, M., &Yokosawa, K. (1991). Processing of kanji and kana characters within Japanese words.Perception & Psychophysics,50, 19–27.
Solso, R. L., Juel, C., &Rubin, D. C. (1982). The frequency and versatility of initial and terminal letters in English words.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,21, 220–235.
Srinivas, K., Roediger, H. L., III, &Rajaram, S. (1992). The role of syllabic and orthographic properties of letter cues in solving word fragments.Memory & Cognition,20, 219–230.
Thorndike, E. L., &Lorge, I. (1944).The teacher’s word book of 30,000 words. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press.
Tsuzuki, T. (1993). Effects of context-dependent and context-independent associative strength between prime and target words on the processing of lexical ambiguity.Japanese Journal of Psychology,64, 191–198.
Ukita, J., Sugishima, I., Minagawa, N., Inoue, M., &Kashu, K. (1996).Nihongo no hyoki keitai ni kansuru shinrigaku kenkyuu [Research on written forms of Japanese words] (Japanese Psychological Monographs 25). Tokyo: Japanese Psychological Association.
Wang, J. (1988). Do phonological and semantic processing of kanji finish at the same time?Japanese Journal of Psychology,59, 252–255.
Wydell, T. N., Butterworth, B., &Patterson, K. (1995). The inconsistency of consistency effects in reading: The case of Japanese kanji.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 1155–1168.
Wydell, T. N., Patterson, K. E., &Humphreys, G. W. (1993). Phonologically mediated access to meaning for kanji: Is a rows still a rose in Japanese kanji?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 491–514.
Yamada, J., Mitarai, Y., &Yoshida, T. (1991). Kanji words are easier to identify than katakana words.Psychological Research,53, 136–141.
Yokosawa, K., &Shimomura, M. (1993). On the role of stimulus similarity and segmentation in misprint detection. In D. Brogan, A. Gale, & K. Carr (Eds.),Visual search 2 (pp. 371–378). London: Taylor & Francis.
Yokoyama, S. (1997).Hyoki to kioku [Orthography and free recall] (Japanese Psychological Monographs 26). Tokyo: Japanese Psychological Association.
Yokoyama, S., Sasahara, H., Nozaki, H., &Long, E. (1998).Shinbun denshi media no kanji [A study of kanji in electronic newspaper media]. Tokyo: Sanseido.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The authors thank the reviewers of the paper for their valuable suggestions.
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chikamatsu, N., Yokoyama, S., Nozaki, H. et al. A Japanese logographic character frequency list for cognitive science research. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 32, 482–500 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03200819
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03200819