Kanji vs hanzi
How Japanese kanji and Chinese hanzi overlap, counted on the jōyō list and the HSK syllabus: shared characters, Japanese-only and Chinese-only forms.
Same code, same character?
Kanji are Chinese characters used in Japanese. Of the 2,136 jōyō kanji (KANJIDIC2 grades 1-6 and 8) and the 3,088 characters of the HSK 2025 syllabus, 1,276 are the very same Unicode character. Sharing a code does not mean sharing everything: 192 of those shared characters have a different stroke order or stroke count in our comparison.
Japanese-only forms
234 jōyō kanji have no Chinese stroke data here, because Make Me a Hanzi does not cover their form. 180 of them are shinjitai, forms Japan simplified after 1946 for which Unihan records an older form (学 for 學). 7 are kokuji, kanji made in Japan, such as 働, 匂, 峠, 搾 and 枠. The other 47 are forms that the Chinese data simply does not include.
Chinese-only forms
1,103 HSK characters have no KanjiVG entry; most are mainland simplifications from the 1950s and 1960s that Japanese did not adopt.
What this means for learners
If you know one script, a large part of the other is familiar, but plan for three kinds of difference: different forms of the same character, the same form with different strokes, and the same character with different meanings. The first two are counted above; the stroke differences are listed in Japanese vs Chinese stroke order.