What counts as a Chinese character?

Characters in the CJK Unified Ideographs block (U+4E00–U+9FFF) and Extension A (U+3400–U+4DBF). This covers Simplified and Traditional Chinese as well as the kanji used in Japanese, since they share the same Unicode block.

Are kanji counted under Chinese or Japanese?

Kanji share the CJK Unified Ideographs Unicode block with Chinese characters, so they are counted in the Chinese/CJK Ideographs row. The Japanese row counts only hiragana and katakana, which are uniquely Japanese scripts.

What does the Korean count include?

It counts precomposed Hangul syllable blocks (U+AC00–U+D7AF), which covers the vast majority of modern Korean text. Jamo (individual consonant/vowel letters) are counted separately under other characters.

Is my text sent to a server?

No. All counting runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never transmitted to any server.

Why do the script totals not add up to the total character count?

The total character count includes every character: spaces, punctuation, newlines, digits, symbols, and any characters outside the tracked script blocks. The script-specific rows count only their respective Unicode ranges.

Does this handle emoji or other Unicode blocks?

Emoji and other characters outside the CJK/kana/hangul ranges are not counted in the script rows. They appear in the total character count and in the "Other" row at the bottom of the breakdown.

CJK Character Counter

Name: CJK Character Counter
Availability: InStock
Author: Nham Vu

Count Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters separately from Latin text, spaces, and punctuation in any mixed-script passage.

Enter Text

Counts update live as you type. Supports Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Latin text.

Character Breakdown

Total Characters 0

Chinese / CJK Ideographs

Japanese Kana (Hiragana + Katakana)

Korean Hangul

Latin Letters

Digits

Spaces

Punctuation & Other

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Summary

Count Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters separately from Latin text, spaces, and punctuation in any mixed-script passage.

How it works

Paste or type your text into the input area.
The tool scans each character against Unicode ranges for CJK ideographs, hiragana, katakana, and hangul.
Chinese characters are identified by the CJK Unified Ideographs block (U+4E00–U+9FFF) and extensions.
Japanese kana are identified by the Hiragana (U+3040–U+309F) and Katakana (U+30A0–U+30FF) blocks.
Korean syllables are identified by the Hangul Syllables block (U+AC00–U+D7AF).
All counts refresh on every keystroke — no button press required.

Use cases

Verify that a subtitle or caption meets per-language character limits.
Check how many CJK characters are in a localized UI string before layout testing.
Audit multilingual marketing copy for correct script distribution.
Count Japanese kana separately from kanji when estimating reading difficulty.
Measure Korean hangul density in translated documents for publishing.
Quickly confirm that pasted text contains the expected languages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated: 2026-06-11 · Reviewed by Nham Vu