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I started to make a list of all the "components" (I don't know how to call
them) all the joyo kanjis are made of, for me to be easier to memorize all the
kanjis (I memorize them by remembering the components the kanjis are made of).
At first I thought this list could match the radicals list, but it isn't the
case. I was wondering if that list already exists and it has a name, since
mine (although it isn't cleaned up) it has over 400 "components", and it isn't
sorted in any readable way, so I could improve mine.
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2016-07-29T19:05:12.103
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kanji etymology radicals
Is there a list of components all the kanjis are made of?
James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" takes the approach of diving the joyo
kanji up into all of its "pieces" so you can take a look at that.
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The "pieces" are called "radicals", and yes there is a list of all of them.
There is a list of 214 radicals used in the Chinese language called the
"Kangxi Radicals", located
[here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical).

There is a simplified version of these that does away with non-Japanese
characters and archaic usages
[here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kanji_radicals_by_frequency).

You can also find the main radical for every Joyo Kanji
[here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji).

Each radical has a name as well, the full list can be found
[here](http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/radical-names.html).
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2016-07-29T21:40:57.133
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Unfortunately, this is a bit of a complicated situation, as there are a few
closely related ideas:

  1. Any piece of a kanji you might recognize as appearing in multiple kanji.
  2. Any piece of a kanji that either is on the official list of radicals from the Kangxi dictionary, or on a closely related list (such as a slightly edited version of that list for another dictionary).
  3. The particular piece of a kanji that is used to index it in the Kangxi dictionary (or similar).

1. and 2. are both commonly called "(kanji) components".  
2. and 3. are both commonly called "(kanji) radicals".  
And 3. alone is called "the main radical".

Lists of things like 2. can be found in many dictionaries (see [jisho.org's
radical search](http://jisho.org/#radical) , for example) or other references
like the links in
[bcloutier](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/users/16049/bcloutier)'s
[answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/37054/2894).

But a bigger list of components in sense #1 is more rare. **A list of 407 (or
so) components can be found
at[Kanshūdō](https://www.kanshudo.com/search?cb=y).**
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As you know, the closest concept to your "pieces" is that of **radicals**.

However, one might use this term to refer to slightly different concepts,
varying in strictness:

  1. A radical of a given character is the unique identifier (picked out of a list of 214 radicals) of this character in a dictionary (especially the Kangxi dictionary).

  2. A radical of a character is any part of the character that appears in the list of the 214 Kangxi radicals.

  3. A radical is any part of a given character.

For the _jōyō kanji_ , the indexing radicals are listed on the official list
(for example on
[Wikipedia](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B8%B8%E7%94%A8%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7)).
Every _kanji_ is either the base character of a radical, or is assigned a
radical from the list.

The very first _kanji_ , 亜, already illustrates very nicely why this
assignment is not always meaningful when looking at the origin of a character.

From the etymological perspective, 亜 (or rather its traditional form 亞), is a
象形文字 depicting (most likely) the (dark) foundation/basement of a building. The
meanings of 悪 and 唖 may be thought of 会意・形声文字 derived from this meaning of
"dark".

Being a simple picture, it doesn't have any meaningful components, certainly
not any related to 二 "two" which is its indexing radical on the _jōyō_ list.

Moreover, several etymologically distinct radicals have been unified to one
form, the most prominent example being the radical ⽉, which represents both 月
(e.g. in 明) and 肉 (e.g. in 腹). Another example is ⺍ which unifies at least the
top of 螢 → 蛍 and 學 → 学.

I think it would be interesting to have a list/database of all "pieces", which
are based on the characters' actual origins. 亞・亜 would be a "piece" of 亜, 悪
and 唖 and 二 wouldn't be a piece of 亜. Also, 亞・亜 would _not_ be a piece of 壺・壷,
because 壺 is itself a 象形文字, and only contains something like 亜 for cosmetic
reasons.

In some cases, the origin of a character is unknown, but it's still possible
to compile such a list based on a decent _kanji_ etymology dictionary, like
新漢和大辞典. (I also have 漢字源 in my Canon 電子辞書.)
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* [CHISE IDS database](http://www.chise.org/ids/index.html). (and derivatives like <https://github.com/cjkvi/cjkvi-ids>) (GPL licensed)

Contains _a lot_ of Kanjis. Includes pieces which aren't official radicals and
also shows how they're arranged in the Kanji.

  * [RADKFILE/KRADFILE](http://nihongo.monash.edu/kradinf.html) - [(CC-BY-SA licensed)](http://www.edrdg.org/edrdg/licence.html)

Used by popular software, like jisho.org.
CC BY-SA 4.0
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I've made a website that might help. It decomposes complex Kanji into simpler
ones.

<https://japanesedecomposer.tk/>
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