What is Kanji?

The Japanese Writing Style

The Japanese use three different script systems in their written language.  These are Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

Hiragana

Hiragana is a phonetic script where, much like English, each character has a unique sound and characters can be written one after the other to spell out a word.  Hiragana literally means "easy" or "rounded".  This is the first thing Japanese children are taught to read and write in school, and entire books exist which just the Hiragana system for children.

The Hiragana script "alphabet" is the following:

 In normal written Japanese, Hiragana characters are used to write the grammatical parts of the sentence or to write out Japanese words that do not have a Kanji character (will explain further below) attributed to that word.

Katakana

Katakana, like Hiragana, is also a phonetic script system.  It is usually the second step to learn Katakana when learning how to read and write Japanese.

The Katakana script "alphabet" is the following:

Katakana symbols are used to write words that are foreign that have been adopted into the Japanese language or to write foreign names (personal names and country names).

Kanji

Our beloved Kanji!  Once you have learned Hiragana and Katakana one usually then learns Kanji.  Kanji means Chinese character.  This script system was invented by the Chinese and then adopted by the Japanese in the middle of the 6th century A.D.

Kanji are ideographs meaning each symbol represents meaning rather than sound.  They were originally pictures drawn from nature but have over time transformed into more general representations:  

By year 9 of their studies, Japanese students are required by the government to know 1,945 Kanji characters.  These are the characters that are vey commonly used, though in total there are over 5,000 more uncommonly used Kanji.  

What are ON pronunciations of Kanji?

Generally there is more than one way to pronounce a Kanji symbol (like we needed it to be more complicated, right? Haha).  The ON pronunciation of the Kanji ("onyomi") is taken from the Chinese pronunciation. 

Most kanji compounds, or words consisting of two or more kanji, use the onyomi pronunciation of such kanji.

An example so you understand what I mean:

自動車 The onyomi pronunciation is "zi-dou-sha" and this word means car or automobile.  By breaking down each of the Kanji symbol meanings you get:

  自 "zi" meaning self.

  動 "dou" meaning move.

  車 "sha" meaning vehicle or cart.

What are KUN pronunciations of Kanji?

On the other hand the KUN pronunciation of the Kanji ("kunyomi") is derived from the indigenous Japanese pronunciation of the same word/meaning.

The konyomi pronunciation of the kanji is usually used when the kanji is a standalone symbol and not part of a kanji compound.  For example:
  人  "hito" meaning person.
  鳥  "tori" meaning bird.
  夢  "yumi" meaning dream.

Well, like Laozi the Chinese philosopher once said:

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - Laozi

 Begin the journey with Kanji #1:

Kanji #1 - KAMI