Stroke Order of a Kanji

The importance of the stroke order of a Kanji

I have always heard the question: Is the stroke order of a kanji important?. This was also one of my first questions when I started learning Japanese. Today, I want to share a small story that can help to see the importance of learning the correct stroke order.

Two children were talking and one asks the other: Do you know the numbers from one to ten? The other child responds: Yes, I do. The numbers from one to ten are 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 9, 8, 6, 7, and 10.

Your first thought might be that the child is wrong or that what he answered is not the correct order. Though, if you look closely, this child actually included all the numbers between one and ten in his answer. However, the child learned the numbers in a random order, probably because he considered it easier that way. Again, he isn’t technically wrong, but you might have the feeling that something is not right. Our brain does something similar when learning something new, such it is in the case of a kanji. By always using the same stroke order, your brain will associate that order with kanji learning and every time that you repeat and use the same stroke order, it will get easier and easier to write it correctly.

Let’s now take a look at a bigger picture. What would happen if this child tries to learn the numbers from 1 to a 100! What a mess would that be?!. Perhaps it will become quite complicated task. But if he had learned the correct order from the beginning, then learning larger numbers would be simpler. The same happens with more complex kanji. For example, 本 (き), which means tree, is used as one of the radicals of the kanji 森 (もり), which means forest. When having an appropriate and previous knowledge of the radical, it facilitates the learning of the more complicated one.

Here is a table for the common stroke orders, which you might find useful during your studies of the Japanese language:

I hope you found this information helpful!