Japanese word count
Paste Japanese text to count its characters (文字数) and words. Japanese limits are usually set in characters, so that count comes first; words are split by your browser's Japanese segmentation.
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At a glance
- Manuscript paper (genkō yōshi)
- Typically 200 or 400 squares a sheet, one character or punctuation mark per square
- Source: en.wikipedia.org, checked 2026-11
- How words are split
- Intl.Segmenter, your browser's built-in word segmentation, since Japanese has no spaces between words
- Source: developer.mozilla.org, checked 2026-11
- How characters are counted
- As you see them: one kanji, one kana or one punctuation mark is one character
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Japanese word count: what to know
This page starts the word counter for this case. For every option and how to use it, see the word counter.
Characters or words?
Japanese is written without spaces, so school essays, applications and manuscripts give their limits in characters rather than words. The counter shows characters with spaces and without, because full-width spaces and line breaks are easy to add by accident.
On genkō yōshi, punctuation takes a square of its own and a new paragraph starts with an empty square, so a handwritten page can fill sooner than the character count suggests.
Word counts are an estimate
Splitting Japanese into words needs a dictionary, and different tools draw the lines in different places: particles such as は and を may or may not count as words. The word count here comes from your browser's segmenter, so it can differ slightly between browsers. Use the character count when a limit is strict.
Questions
Do Japanese limits count words or characters?
Usually characters (文字数), because Japanese has no spaces between words. Check the instructions to see whether spaces and punctuation are included.
How many characters fit on a sheet of genkō yōshi?
Typically 200 or 400, one per square, with punctuation taking its own square.