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Bureaucrat

On’yomiかん
MeaningsBureaucrat, The Government, Organ
JLPT N3 8 strokes #229 most common Grade 4 Radical roof
書き順 · Stroke order

How to write 官

Stroke order is not decoration — it determines how the character looks handwritten and how dictionaries index it.

8 strokes
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分解 · What it is made of

The parts of 官

Almost every kanji is built from a small set of reusable parts. Learn the parts once and you stop memorising thousands of unrelated shapes.

部首 · Radical

The radical of 官

Radical 40 of 214
Roof

The radical is the part a paper dictionary files a kanji under, and it usually hints at meaning. 官 is filed under (roof) — radical number 40 of the 214 in the Kangxi system.

Other kanji built on 宀

練習 · Practice

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Bureaucrat かん
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熟語 · In real words

Words that use 官

Kanji are almost never met alone. These are the most common words built from this character, ordered by how often they actually appear in Japanese.

長官 ちょうかん secretary (government); director; chief
次官 じかん vice-minister; undersecretary
官僚 かんりょう bureaucrat; government official; bureaucracy
官邸 かんてい official residence (e.g. of the prime minister)
官房長官 かんぼうちょうかん Chief Cabinet Secretary (Japan); Chief of Staff (to the President, Prime Minister, etc.);
高官 こうかん high official
司令官 しれいかん commandant; commanding officer; general
事務次官 じむじかん permanent vice-president; undersecretary; vice-minister
官房 かんぼう government secretariat
国務長官 こくむちょうかん Secretary of State
同音 · Sound-alikes

Kanji that sound like 官

Japanese has far more kanji than syllables, so one reading is shared by many characters. These are the ones you will confuse with 官 — learn them together, not separately.

画数 · 8 strokes

Other 8-stroke kanji

Useful when looking a character up by stroke count — and a common source of visual mix-ups.

頻度 · Frequency

Next in the frequency list

官 is the 229th most common kanji in written Japanese. Learning in frequency order is the fastest route to reading real text.

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質問 · Questions

About the kanji 官

What does the kanji 官 mean?

官 means Bureaucrat, The Government, Organ. It is the 229th most common kanji in written Japanese.

How do you read the kanji 官?

官 is read on'yomi (Chinese-derived) かん.

How many strokes does 官 have?

官 is written with 8 strokes. The animated diagram on this page shows the correct order.

What level is the kanji 官?

It appears at JLPT level N3, and Japanese schoolchildren learn it in grade 4.

What is the radical of 官?

The radical of 官 is 宀 (roof), radical number 40 of the 214 Kangxi radicals. The radical is the component a dictionary files the character under, and it usually points at the character's meaning.

What words use the kanji 官?

Common words written with 官 include 長官 (ちょうかん, secretary (government); director; chief); 次官 (じかん, vice-minister; undersecretary); 官僚 (かんりょう, bureaucrat; government official; bureaucracy).

Which kanji sound the same as 官?

官 shares a reading with 間 (かん), 関 (かん), 感 (かん), 幹 (かん), 監 (かん), among others. Same-sounding kanji are one of the most common sources of confusion in Japanese.

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