Types of Kanji

[brad12]

How many types of Kanji can some one tell?How much kanji is important?

[Javizy]

The minimum you need to know to read the news is the jouyou set. It was 1945 characters, but it either already has or is going to change very soon to over 2000. Most Japanese people know about 3000, but many can only write a much smaller subset by hand. Check out Heisig's Remembering the Kanji if you don't want to end up like them

[a_cubed]

The MEXT (ministry of eduction etc) has just released the revision to the Joyou Kanji list (after originally promising it would appear in 2007). It adds 196 characters and deltes 5 (IIRC).

The Joyou Kanji list is tist of kanji that high school graduaates are supposed to know. In official documents these are the only ones that can be used without adding furigana. other Kanji can be used but must include furigana. The usual estimates are that there are 3000 kanji in regular widespread usage and within specialist fields a total of another 3000 in regular use. Of course most people will only need one or two specialist fields so perhaps only need 1-200 more thanthe 3000 regular use ones.

I'm not sure of your level but I've been told (and am beginning to expience this myself) that after the first few hundred it does actually become easier. After you know a couple of hundred you know most of the radicals (small versions of individual simple kanji that are used to make up the more complicated ones). After this you are remembering combinations of simple Kanji making up the more complicated ones mostly, instead of remembering an entirely new graphic. So, example the Kanji for wash: 洗う is the radical for water on the left and the radical for before on the right, which I always remember as "water in front of one" i.e. standing at a basin of water. Note that for Japanese kids learning Kanji is easier because they already hae vocabulary and are just adding symbol to represent it, whereas for JSL learners they're often trying to learn both at the same time.