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I have been searching around, but all the sources give completely different
answers ranging from 2,000 to 50,000. So my question is how many Kanji
characters that have ever existed since the dawn of time? Does this include
unofficial characters?
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words kanji
How many Kanji characters are there?
50,000 is usually the number given for the number of Kanji characters since
the dawn of time.

2,000 is roughly the number than comprises compulsory education.

5,000 is often assigned to particularly well-read persons (e.g. university
professors).

I remember reading a newspaper article about one of these "[living national
treasures](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_National_Treasures_of_Japan)",
who was supposedly able to read 10,000 characters. (I have yet to find a
reference.) One does have to wonder, however, how they determined the number.
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An authoritative classic, the [Kāngxī
dictionary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_dictionary), lists over 47,000
characters. The [Hanyu Da
Zidian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_Da_Zidian), a more modern
reference, has over 54,000 characters; the [Dai Kan-Wa
Jiten](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_Kan-Wa_jiten), the Japanese
equivalent, has over 50,000. Even more recently, the [Zhōnghuá
Zìhǎi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhonghua_Zihai) has over 85,000
characters, but apparently many of those are variants.

Of course, such counting is more-or-less academic. In Japan, there are only
2,136 [Jōyō kanji](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji) (lit.
commonly-used kanji), which are the ones taught in school, though literate
people usually know more. The equivalent list in Chinese is the [Xiàndài Hànyǔ
Chángyòng
Zìbiǎo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiandai_Hanyu_Changyong_Zibiao), which
has about 3,500 characters.
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For what it's worth, according to
[wikipedia](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97#.E6.BC.A2.E5.AD.97.E3.81.AE.E6.95.B0),
the current largest compendium of Chinese characters, 異体字辞典([Yitizi
Zidian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhonghua_Zihai#Other_dictionaries)), has
106,230 entries, which includes all forms (including alternate versions) of
each character.
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I feel like this question is lacking a super detailed answer, so I'm going to
give an excruciatingly detailed breakdown of various kanji thresholds.

1,500ish: This is probably the range of kanji that the average person
remembers how to actually handwrite directly from memory.

2,136: This is the number of jouyou kanji. These are the kanji that are
required to be taught in compulsory education (elementary and middle school,
which goes through 9th grade in Japan). This list is followed closely by
government documents, and most newspapers also will restrict themselves to
these, but it isn't closely followed by anything else.

2,999: This is the number that includes the jinmeiyou kanji. These are the
kanji legally allowed to be used in names, in additional to the jouyou kanji.
There are 863 kanji on this, which brings the total to 2,999. Despite the
primary use (and 人名用 literally meaning "for use in names"), not every kanji on
the list is exclusively on it for its use in names. For example, 臭 is on the
list, and no one in their right mind would give a kanji for "stench" as the
name of a child (and as far surname websites can tell me, no one has it as a
family name either). Rather, 212 of the kanji are just the traditional form of
the jouyou kanji that were simplified after ww2.

3,500~4,000: This is about the number of kanji a normal Japanese person can
read within the context of a word. I can only find guesses of this, since I
can't find a study that covers the number.

6,300ish: We have two major thresholds. First, this is the number of kanji
tested that the highest level of the kanji kentei. This is far beyond what
most Japanese people can do, and is mainly gotten to look good on ones resume,
but someone who really likes kanji may also consider it.

Also at this level is the number of kanji encoded levels 1 and 2 of JIS X 0213
encoding standards (6,355). This was all you could reliably expect a generic
computer system in the '80s to support. The kanji on both closely match,
though there are differences. There are kanji on the level 1 kanken exam which
are at a higher level of JIS encoding, and over a hundred kanji in the JIS
levels aren't included due to being only in very rare place names, or in some
cases, not in anything at all (the 幽霊漢字). Basically, when created back in the
'70s, there were a few kanji that were surely mistakes/misprints that were
included into the standard. They obviously had to be continued to be supported
in later updates, even though use of them is very dubious.

6,715: This is the number of kanji when you include IBM select characters
which was included with DOS and the early versions of Windows. These were
included to maintain support with older systems that included those kanji. Not
all systems would support these in the '80s/'90s, but some did. The only use
of these kanji I've ever seen is in names, either because the name existed
before Japan started enforcing the Jinmeiyou kanji, because they are
Chinese/Korean and are keeping their kanji from there, or just as something
that isn't their legal name, but that they personally use anyways.

10,134: This is the number of kanji in the latest JIS standard (JIS X 0213),
plus the 84 from the IBM select characters that weren't included in the
standard so we keep our set increasing.

13,322: This is the number of kanji in JIS X 0213 combined with the old
supplemental standard in JIS X 0212, plus the remaining 34 kanji in IBM select
that was in neither. This is basically the number of kanji that were part of a
"major" JIS version.

14,664 - This is the number of kanji supported by Adobe-Japan1-7, the de facto
standard Japanese font specification. The extra stuff here from beyond the
last mentioned one is pulled from a wide variety of sources. This is basically
the limit as far as Japanese kanji goes.

The two ways to increase from here is if we wish to extend to the number of
Japanese characters in general or from the number of han characters in
general. Since the latter is already covered in the other answers (over
100,000), we will go with a final number of Japanese characters of around 15
thousand characters, adding in hiragana, katakana (including the ones used
specifically for Ainu), hentaigana, and bonji.
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