The world’s toughest! A collection of insanely hard-to-read kanji

music writerKOH-1
Started working as a music writer as a side job while employed at a record shop, and for over 18 years I’ve contributed to music magazines, disc guide books, mooks, and web media. As a writer my main field is Western music, but as a listener for over 35 years, I always try to keep my curiosity alive with the motto “I like what I like.” I have experience playing in bands, where I was a bassist who handled songwriting and composition. Instruments I’ve played include bass, guitar, and piano. I began studying English in my mid-40s and continue to do so today.

The kanji that we Japanese use as a matter of course come naturally to us not only when writing sentences but even when we’re calling something to mind.

In fact, texts written only in hiragana or katakana are very hard to read, and just thinking about that shows how convenient kanji are.

Even for us, who are so familiar with kanji in our daily lives, there are many characters that make us scratch our heads and ask, “How do you read this?”

In this article, we’ve picked out kanji that not only people overseas studying Japanese but even a large majority of Japanese people can’t read.

We include their readings as well as the origins of the words, but first, have fun seeing how many you can read—like a kanji quiz!

The World’s Hardest! A Collection of Amazing Kanji You’re Incredible If You Can Read (11–20)

filthy; squalid; narrow-minded; petty; mean; niggardly

It uses kanji that you don’t often see, and the high number of strokes also gives it a difficult impression.

Each kanji is read as “kosetsuku” when written as 「齷く」 and as “tsutsushimu” when written as 「齪む」, but even knowing that, it still seems hard to arrive at the answer.

Looking at the variant that uses different characters with the same reading, '偓促', might bring you closer to the answer.

The answer is “akuseku,” a word that describes being fussy and unable to relax over trivial matters.

The crowded, many-stroked components also convey a restless feeling.

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In conclusion

Kanji are incredibly handy—you can look at, say, a signboard written in Chinese characters and, even if you don’t know how to read it, you can often guess the meaning if you recognize the characters. But the ones I introduced this time were probably all examples where, even if you know the kanji, you still can’t figure out the reading or the meaning. If you’re interested, I encourage you to delve into the deep and fascinating world of hard-to-read kanji!