DEV Community: Daniel Sato

Free Kanji Finder by My Japanese Name Translator

Daniel Sato — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:51:16 +0000

Can't read a Japanese character? Now you can draw it, search it, and learn it all in one tool.

Japanese linguist Daniel Sato, the creator behind My Japanese Name Translator, built the Kanji Finder to solve a universal problem: identifying unknown kanji. Whether you're reading manga, studying for the JLPT, or decoding a tattoo, this free tool gives you three powerful ways to find any character.

Draw the kanji with your mouse, finger, or stylus. Our handwriting recognition engine matches your strokes against 2,200+ characters and delivers live candidates instantly, no perfect stroke order required. Search by radical to narrow 6,000+ kanji down to a handful by selecting the components you recognize. Or look up by meaning, romaji, or kana reading to find characters you can hear but can't write.

Every result unlocks a full kanji card: on'yomi and kun'yomi readings, English meanings, animated stroke-order diagrams, JLPT level, school grade, and real example vocabulary with translations.

Everything runs privately in your browser your drawings never leave your device.

The Kanji Finder joins the Kanji to Hiragana Converter and Hiragana to Katakana Converter in the growing My Japanese Name Translator toolkit.

Try it free → myjapanesenametranslator.com/kanji-finder

Master Kanji with our Free Kanji Finder! ✍️🇯🇵

Daniel Sato — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:44:08 +0000

Draw, search, and identify unknown characters instantly! Created by expert Daniel Sato, our new Kanji Finder semantically links Japanese writing to English meanings. Runs 100% privately in-browser, the perfect companion to our famous My Japanese Name Translator. Try it now!

Kanji Finder — Draw Kanji, Radical Search & Lookup | Free

Draw a kanji to identify it instantly, search by radical, or look up kanji by reading or meaning. Stroke order, readings, JLPT level, and example words included.

myjapanesenametranslator.com

How I built a browser-based Japanese name translator with vanilla JS (no backend)

Daniel Sato — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 06:29:10 +0000

Writing a foreign name in Japanese sounds simple until you try to do it correctly. Japanese isn't spelled letter-by-letter; it's built from morae, small sound units, and foreign names map to the closest katakana sounds. "Smith" becomes スミス (Su-mi-su), "Clark" becomes クラーク (Ku-rā-ku). I wanted a tool that does this instantly, in the browser, with no server round trip. Here's how it works.
The core idea: sounds, not letters
English has consonant clusters and standalone consonants that Japanese phonology doesn't allow every mora ends in a vowel (or "n"). So the converter's job is to:

Break the name into phonetic units, not letters
Map each unit to the nearest Japanese mora
Apply the katakana conventions Japan uses for foreign names

A tiny mapping, client-side
No API, no backend — just a lookup table and a few rules in the browser:
`js

`javascript
const romajiToKatakana = {
ka:"カ", ki:"キ", ku:"ク", ke:"ケ", ko:"コ",
sa:"サ", shi:"シ", su:"ス", se:"セ", so:"ソ",
// ...full syllabary
};

function nameToKatakana(name) {
const romaji = normalize(name); // L→R, V→B, etc.
return splitIntoMorae(romaji) // group into syllable units
.map(m => romajiToKatakana[m] ?? m) // map each mora
.join("");
}
Because it all runs client-side, nothing you type ever leaves your device — which matters when people convert their own names.
Why katakana (not kanji)
For non-Japanese names, katakana is the correct, culturally appropriate script — it's what Japan uses for foreign names on passports and official documents. Kanji "name" conversions are ateji (chosen for sound, not meaning), so they're fun but not a real Japanese name. The tool shows all four scripts and flags katakana as the authentic one.
Try it
Live version: My Japanese Name Translator type any English name and see it in katakana, hiragana, kanji, and romaji with pronunciation.
I'm Daniel Sato, a Japanese linguist and the developer behind it — happy to talk phonetics or implementation in the comments.