405/2000
JLPT: N3
School Grade: 6th (11 years old)
This character is a combination of a variant of 才 a character meaning genius (that depicts a dam across a stream) and 子 child. Here 子 is working phonetically to express “pile up,” giving “piled up dam,” or “a dam that is firmly in place,” which then gives the extended meaning of “exist.” This character has come to mean “exist” in a broad/abstract sense.
411/2000
JLPT: N4
School Grade: 4th (9 years old)
This character is a combination of 牛 a character meaning cow/bull and 寺 temple.
416/2000
JLPT: N3
School Grade: 5th (10 years old)
This character is a combination of 厶 the katakana mu radical, 月 flesh/meat (yes, it is identical to moon, but this is also the form 肉 meat takes when it appears as a radical), and 匕 the spoon/katakana hi radical.
417/2000
JLPT: N2
School Grade: 5th (10 years old)
This character is a combination of 扌 the hand radical and 妾 a non-general use character meaning concubine. Here, 妾 is acting phonetically to express “take,” while also lending the meaning of “join,” which gives “taking someone by the hand/joining hands.” This then gives the meaning of “join/contact” in a broader sense.
419/2000
JLPT: N3
School Grade: 4th (9 years old)
The left-hand portion of this character (which can be taken as a combination of メ katakana me and 木 wood/tree) is actually a corruption of 豕 a non-general use character meaning pig. The right hand portion is 殳 strike, depicting a hand (又) holding an axe (几). Originally this character meant “kill a pig,” but has since come to mean “kill” in general.
421/2000
JLPT: N2
School Grade: 4th (9 years old)
This character was formerly written 藝, but the middle portion 埶 (which is an uncommon kanji meaning “art” and still exists as a character in Chinese) has since been eliminated. That leaves us with ⺾ the plant radical and 云 a non-general use character meaning “speak.”
