I am currently organising my Anki Kanji flashcards according the 「日本語漢字能力漢検　級別漢字表」, in level 2 which tests the newly added 196 joyo kanji, there are two variations for some kanji and according to the footnote on the last page, the correct kanji is the one in the bracket [ ].

However, Japanese computer fonts (mincho, meiryo and others) can only display the variation outside the [].

can anyone who recently taken the Kanken level 2 test tell me what should I do here?

Copy of the 級別漢字表 can be obtained here
http://www.kanken.or.jp/teido/pdf/national_list.pdf

footnote: on the last page
日本漢字能力検定２〜10
級においては、「常用漢字表」およびこの「級別漢字表」に示された字体で書くこと。
また、「常用漢字表」に参考として示されている康こう煕き 字典体など、旧字体を用いると正答とは認められない。ただし、一部例外として、級別漢字表内の〔　〕内の字体は正答と認める。

There's only 20 of them. Don't worry about it.

By the time you get to 2kyu you should be really damn good at kanji and will know that the computer font is obviously a traditional form and the correct form for the test is the modern forms that are used with the other 2000 kanji you learned before you got to that point.

And there must be a font with the correct forms somewhere, I would look around for that.

Good luck. I'm studying for Level 1! It's going to take a lot of time...oh well.

The Kanji that have come across...some are just so interesting.

imabi Wrote:Good luck. I'm studying for Level 1! It's going to take a lot of time...oh well.

The Kanji that have come across...some are just so interesting.

Good luck, that sounds pretty hard! Out of pure curiosity, do you have/know of a somewhat official file like the one posted by financialwar but with the kanjis for level pre-1 and 1? Since I would probably like to take level 1 some decade or so in the future, it would be nice to get used to using the test-appropriate form right from when I add the kanjis to Anki to spare that time down the line (I add kanjis outside RtK1 as I run across them). Do they in general use modern forms as well for the level 1 and pre-1 (like the ones questioned by the OP) or do they stick more to the traditional forms there?

Sorry about all the questions, but I couldn't find a lot about it in English and I can't really read Japanese yet, so I thought it might be worth asking.

I imagine more traditional forms would appear in 1 and pre-1 because all of those kanji are outside of the government lists and thus the standardizations that occured to the joyo kanji after WWII do not apply to them.

Yes that's true. I actually have a site bookmarked on my iPad with tons of information to read through for the Kanken up to level 1. It's amazing.

The site is http://www.geocities.jp/bunakobo/kanken1.html

It's amazing what you can find when you google such characters though. It leads to many more great resources. I might start making blog posts on my own site, or here, about what I learn each day in preparation. Rare words, proverbs, etc.

There's another one that I know of that I come across when researching characters for the test that is currently under construction. They add new information about a handful of Kanji every now and then. They haven't included every character that can potentially show up on the test, but they have a lot. I just don't know where it is right now. I'll investigate.

What's the reason for "(de-)simplifying" 稽 into (?) with 上 instead of 匕? Surely that's not right? Edit: seems they use the 上 form in Korea, but why is this form the "official" one in Japan, since 匕+日 are way more common?

That really makes no sense to me either. I've always used 稽. I know it was included in the list because of words like 稽古

Personally, I don't know why they had to get rid of 5 characters. I understand 銑, but I kind of like 匁. 璽 is more useless than 膨.
It took them way too long to include characters like 岡.

imabi Wrote:The site is http://www.geocities.jp/bunakobo/kanken1.html

Thanks a lot, the lists on this site are exactly what I was looking for. =)

Great! Let me know what you learn from it! I like the fact that there are just so many sentences with the characters actually used.

toshiromiballza Wrote:What's the reason for "(de-)simplifying" 稽 into http://i46.tinypic.com/124eagm.png (?) with 上 instead of 匕? Surely that's not right? Edit: seems they use the 上 form in Korea, but why is this form the "official" one in Japan, since 匕+日 are way more common?

The first one, the one with 匕 , IS the official one (in the jouyou kanji list), the other one is just tolerated (as handwritten form).
You can check this on the official list (you can download the pdf here)
In the pdf you can find some notes about it and some other examples of official shinjitai, kyuujitai, unofficial shinjitai (ryakuji) and tolerated forms (most "famous" issues being 頰 vs 頬, 剝 vs 剥 and 塡 vs 填 'cause the jis form of each of them isn't even listed as an official 字体 while their official jitai is in unicode but not in jis).

Btw here you can find some other problematic kanji...

Ah, I see.

This will only confuse things (and already does), unless the Ministry decides to simplify them, like they did many years ago.

Here is a funny post by Jim Breen regarding this:

Quote:A Tale of Two Kanji (or Perhaps Only One Kanji)

Once upon a time there was a kanji, 頰, meaning "cheek." It was a venerable kanji with an ancestry going back thousands of years. It wasn't that commonly used, but it was happy with its place in life.

But a few people in China and Japan were not entirely happy with 頰. They were The Simplifiers, and they thought 頰 was a little overweight. It could well do with a few fewer strokes. So one day they made a slimmer lightweight shadow kanji: 頬.

Now this wasn't a big problem, because they were really just the one kanji. People could happily choose whether they wrote one or the other, and people could read them both. It was a bit like the way some people in Europe write "7" with an extra stroke. We all know what it means.

Then one day, not that long ago, people in Japan began to make standard sets of numeric codes for kanji so they could be used in newfangled computers, and at the same time they prepared tables showing what the kanji looked like. For our old friend, they decided that the image for the computer code would be the slim version: 頬. And it was so. For about the next 30 years, 頬 was what appeared on screens, in computer documents, in printouts, etc., etc. Most people forgot there was ever a 頰.

But this fatter version was not entirely forgotten. Some people created a second "supplementary standard" for the kanji that missed out on being in the first one, and they decided to add 頰 there. This wasn't really a problem, as no one actually used the supplement.

Then one day, some people met in secret and declared, "There are far too many standards for characters being used in computers. There should only be ONE. Let us combine ALL the standards together!" And thus Unicode was born, and into it went both kanji standards. And so Unicode contained both 頬 and 頰. Suddenly instead of really being two shadowy versions of the same kanji, they had become two different kanji. They both meant "cheek," they were both read as キョウ and as ほほ or ほお, but they were different—they had their very own codes.

This didn't really matter at first, as no one used Unicode much in Japan. But gradually more and more people did.

And lo, one day the grey-suited men in the smoke-filled rooms in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, etc., etc., decided that Japanese schoolchildren weren't learning enough kanji and that a whole lot more had to be added to the 常用漢字. On the list to be added was our old friend Mr. Cheek.

But wait! Which Mr. Cheek? There are two! Well, the grey-suited men in the Ministry of Whatever had an answer. One thing they had learned in their law courses at Tokyo University (everyone in the Ministry of Whatever is a law graduate from Tokyo) is Never Simplify! So into the 常用漢字 went 頰. Its slim younger brother 頬, which is found in computer files and electronic dictionaries all over Japan, was left out in the cold. It didn't matter that no one actually used 頰. It was the principle that counted. After all, they weren't law graduates for nothing.

So in coming years high school students in Japan will be taught to write 頰, not 頬. And if they go to look up words like 頰ずり in their online 大辞林, they won't find them because it only has 頬ずり and the codes are different. Confusion will reign. Questions will be asked but to no avail as the law graduates will have moved on by then to their 天下り jobs.

Perhaps the computer companies will start displaying 頰 for the 頬 code. That might help, and it might make things even worse. No one will know which is which. Someone will suggest that either 頰 or 頬 be abolished. No way! Unicode is immutable; once a character goes in, it will never come out. Perhaps people will ignore their teachers and stick with 頬. If they are smart, that's what they will do.

And to think, there was once only one kanji for "cheek," and now we have two. Did we really deserve it?

(Taken from http://www.joyokanji.com/status-updates/...ther-cheek)

Yeah, actually when I first found out there was a problem with tagaini jisho, I ended up telling Jim Breen about this issue with kanjidic2 (where 頬 appears to be a jouyou kanji, while it isn't) and he explained the whole matter to me replying to my mail and then decided to write that post.

kazeatari Wrote:Yeah, actually when I first found out there was a problem with tagaini jisho, I ended up telling Jim Breen about this issue with kanjidic2 (where 頬 appears to be a jouyou kanji, while it isn't) and he explained the whole matter to me replying to my mail and then decided to write that post.

what are you talking about, 頬 is a jouyou kanji?

warakawa Wrote:what are you talking about, 頬 is a jouyou kanji?

Read the two posts above his.

toshiromiballza Wrote:

warakawa Wrote:what are you talking about, 頬 is a jouyou kanji?

Read the two posts above his.

exactly what I mean, that post supports the fact that 頬 is a jouyou kanji

No, it clearly says that 頰 is joyo kanji and 頬 is not. I guess it's up to Jim Breen whether he wants to mark (simplified/Asahi-ized/all) variants of joyo kanji as joyo kanji, but I think most people would agree that neither 讀 nor the following character are joyo kanji:

To the OP: you misunderstood the footnote. This is what is says:

The Kanji Kentei is based on the forms listed in the official Joyo kanji list (these are listed, non-bracketed, on the pdf). Other forms, including Kangxi dictionary forms or forms listed as Kyujitai in the official list will not be accepted as correct answers. However, as an exception (例外) to this rule, the forms listed in brackets on this pdf will also be considered as correct answers for the purpose of this test.

TL;DR all forms in that pdf, whether or not in brackets, are considered correct for the test up to 2kyu.