In 1981, the Japanese Ministry of Education published their "Joyo kanji" list, an official listing of 1,945 kanji characters. The list comprises all the kanji you might expect to encounter in "everyday use" - on signs, in newspapers and so on. Japanese children have to learn all 1,945 Joyo kanji by the time they leave high school.

The first 1,006 of the Joyo kanji are known as "Kyoiku kanji". These are the kanji which are studied by children in the first six years of elementary and junior high school. The Kyoiku kanji are further subdivided into six grades, representing the syllabus of each of the first six years of the Japanese education system.

So, the Kyoiku kanji are a wholly-contained subset of the Joyo kanji. Schoolchildren learn grades 1 to 6 of the Kyoiku kanji, then the rest of the Joyo kanji.

There are a number of differences between the JLPT syllabus and the Joyo list (think about it for a second - the numbers don't match, for starters). The early Kyoiku kanji tend to be the most graphically simple ones, whereas the JLPT kanji appear to be ordered more in terms of how common they are. This makes perfect sense when you consider that the JLPT test is designed for adults studying Japanese as a foreign language, whereas the Kyoiku syllabus is designed for young Japanese schoolchildren.

The Kanji SITE was designed primarily for people studying for the JLPT exam, but I'm currently working to adapt the site so that you can study according to the Joyo (and Kyoiku) syllabus instead. Watch this space.