Japanese Text Counter - Ninja Character Counter

How do you count 'words' in Japanese if there are no spaces?

You don't, in practice — Japanese has no reliable word boundary the way space-separated languages do, since Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji run together continuously. Length is instead measured in characters (文字数, mojisuu), where every symbol counts as one unit. This tool paste-and-count workflow reflects that: it reports total characters and a script-by-script breakdown instead of a word count.

What makes a Japanese-specific character counter different from a generic one?

A generic counter just returns one total. This tool parses each character's Unicode block to classify it as Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, or Latin/Romaji, and separately tracks full-width versus half-width spaces — distinctions a generic Western text counter has no reason to make, but that matter for translation billing, JLPT prep, and readability checks.

How can I see just the Kanji count in a piece of Japanese text?

Paste the text in and the breakdown panel shows the Kanji count separately from Hiragana and Katakana, along with what percentage of the text each script makes up. This is the number to watch when checking whether a draft leans too Kanji-heavy for its intended reading level — a high Kanji ratio reads as more formal or more difficult.

How long will this Japanese text take to read?

This counter reports character counts, not reading time — use the character total (with spaces excluded) as the input to a reading-time estimate at roughly 400-600 characters per minute for silent reading, or closer to 300 characters per minute for reading aloud. For an automatic time estimate instead of manual math, use the dedicated Japanese Reading Time Calculator, which takes this same character count and converts it directly.

How is word count calculated for Japanese translation invoicing?

Japanese translation is billed per character (文字数), not per word, since Japanese sentences have no word breaks to count. The industry standard is to bill on visible characters with spaces excluded. The 'No Spaces' metric in this tool gives exactly that clean character count, which is what translators use for invoicing and project estimates.