Kanji N2 & N1 Study Guide: 895 Characters with On'yomi and Kun'yomi Readings

At N2 and N1, kanji stop being a memory game and become a reading game. The characters you meet in newspapers, contracts and novels are rarely pictographic; they are compounds whose meaning you infer from their parts and whose reading you guess from a phonetic component. The Kanji N2 & N1 deck on Flip It (deck code CV6093, 895 cards) is built for exactly that stage: every card shows one kanji on the front and, on the back, its core English meanings plus the on'yomi in katakana and the kun'yomi in hiragana, with the okurigana marked by a dot (きず.く = 築く).

What one card looks like

Notice that some N1 characters (療, 踪, 圏, 髄, 娠, 症) carry no kun'yomi at all: they only live inside compounds like 治療, 失踪 or 妊娠. That is a useful signal — learn those as building blocks, not as standalone words.

What the 895 cards cover

The deck runs through the full N2 list and the bulk of N1, so you'll meet: economy and administration (値, 績, 債, 刊, 衆, 裁, 圏, 執), verbs of action (揮, 握, 掃, 詰, 蓄, 寄, 混), medicine and body (療, 症, 傷, 膜, 髄, 娠), emotion and judgement (誇, 崇, 誤, 慌, 憶, 痴), society and people (嫁, 婆, 坊, 賊, 衆), abstract description (偏, 微, 漠, 陰, 朗, 荒), everyday nouns (塩, 琴, 枚, 片, 溝, 郊), and rare literary kanji such as 綾 (figured cloth), 椎 (evergreen oak) and 曽 (formerly).

Two tips that only work at this level

1. Study by phonetic component, not by JLPT list order. Flip through the deck and you will find pairs that share both a part and an on'yomi: 荒 and 慌 are both コウ; 畜 and 蓄 are both チク; 績 sits in the セキ family with 責 and 積. When a new card shares a right-hand component with one you already know, guess the on'yomi before flipping. At N1 this guess is right often enough to cut your learning time roughly in half.

2. Turn the dot into a conjugation drill. The kun'yomi is written with the stem separated from the okurigana (た.つ, ま.ざる, まぬか.れる). When you see 免 → まぬか.れる, don't just read it: produce 免れる, 免れた, 免れない out loud. The dot tells you exactly which part is written in kana, which is the thing N1 reading passages test.

A realistic pace

At 895 cards, 25 new kanji a day gets you through the deck in about five weeks, with Flip It's spaced repetition scheduling reviews so that yesterday's 隠 (conceal) comes back before you have forgotten it. Reverse the cards once a week — English and readings on the front, kanji to recall — because N1 asks you to write 匿名 and 憶測, not only to recognise them.

Log in to Flip It and search the library for Kanji N2 & N1 (code CV6093) to start.