Kankore: Kanji & Kana Writing

A picture book that fills with the kanji you write by hand. No red X: it shows which stroke went wrong. Hiragana to grade 6 kanji, three a day. 15 per stage free, no ads.

Kankore is a handwriting app for Japanese: hiragana, katakana and kanji, from the 92 kana children learn before school to all 1,026 kanji of the six years of Japanese elementary school. Only the characters your child writes by hand are collected, as cards in their own picture book, the zukan.

The app itself is in Japanese. Everything a child sees is written in hiragana and katakana and read aloud, so it suits children growing up with Japanese at home or abroad, and learners who want to write Japanese properly.

WATCH, TRACE, WRITE See the stroke order one stroke at a time, trace the faint character, then write it on your own.

NO RED X A wrong start, a wrong direction, the wrong order, one stroke split in two or two strokes joined: Kankore says which stroke went wrong and how, then lets your child try again. Neatness and the finer points of stroke endings never fail a stroke.

CATCH EVERY CHARACTER Cards have three levels. Written without the model, a character is caught; written again on a later day, it is mastered. Writing it three times in one day does not count, so the book only holds characters your child can really write.

SEE HOW KANJI ARE BUILT Characters come in families, like 木, 林 and 森. Complete a family to see how its characters are put together: 木 + 木 = 林.

THREE A DAY, THEN DONE Three characters a day (or one, or five), about five minutes, with a clear end. There are no streaks to lose.

FOR PARENTS

• A parent page behind a three-second press shows today's characters, this week's practice days, and the characters most often missed, and why.
• Make printable practice sheets from the characters your child has written or often misses, and print them or save them as PDF.
• Set your child's grade and how far ahead they may go.
• Up to four children on one device.
• The kanji of each grade follow the official Japanese school list, and the stroke order is the one taught in Japanese schools.

FREE TO TRY, NO ADS The first 15 characters of every stage (hiragana, katakana and each school grade) are free. One purchase in the parent area unlocks the other 998 for good. No ads, no subscription, no account. The purchase sits behind a parent check, so a child never sees a price or a buy button.

PRIVACY Progress stays on the device and moves to a new one with your iCloud backup. To improve the app, usage records (the characters practiced and the results, never your child's name) are sent to Google Analytics. They are not used for advertising or tracking.

For iPhone and iPad with iOS 17 or later; iPad works in landscape too.

Credits: stroke data KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0), readings KANJIDIC2 (CC BY-SA 4.0), voice VOICEVOX:春日部つむぎ