Kyōiku kanji

The kyōiku kanji (教育漢字, literally "education kanji") are kanji which Japanese elementary school students should learn from first through sixth grade. Also known as gakushū kanji (学習漢字, literally "learning kanji"), these kanji are listed on the Gakunenbetsu kanji haitō hyō (学年別漢字配当表(ja), literally "table of kanji by school year"),. The table is developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT). Although the list is designed for Japanese students, it can also be used as a sequence of learning characters by non-native speakers as a means of focusing on the most commonly used kanji.
Kyōiku kanji are a subset (1,026) of the 2,136 characters of jōyō kanji.
Notes:
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Kokuji are characters originally created in Japan; two of them are kyōiku kanji: 働 (Grade 4) and 畑 (Grade 3). There are also 8 kokuji within the secondary-school kanji and 16 within the jinmeiyō kanji. The character 働 and some others are also used in Chinese now, but most kokuji are unknown outside Japan.
Kokkun are characters and combinations of characters that have different meanings in Japanese and Chinese
For example, the character combination 手紙 means 'letter' in Japanese, but 'toilet paper' in Chinese. However, the isolated characters have the same meaning in both languages: 手 (Grade 1) means 'hand', and 紙 (Grade 2) means 'paper'.
China and Japan simplified their writing systems independently from each other. After World War II, their relations were hostile, so they did not cooperate. Traditional Chinese characters are still officially used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Korea (Hanja supplemented Hangul, but are now mainly historical), and by many overseas Chinese.
In Chinese, many more characters were simplified than in Japanese; some characters were simplified in only one language; other characters were simplified in the same way in both languages, and other characters were simplified in both languages but in different ways. This means that those who want to learn the writing systems of both languages must sometimes learn at least three different variations of one character: traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and modern Japanese (for example 兩 - 两 - 両). Some others have more variations, such as (斗 - 鬥 - 鬭 - 鬬 - 鬪 - 鬦 - 闘 - 閗), some of which are considered the older forms of Chinese characters and variations of different Chinese regions, and the older forms of Japanese characters (kyūjitai).
Note that within the kyōiku kanji, there are 26 characters; the old forms of which may cause problems displaying:
These characters are Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs for which the old form (kyūjitai) and the new form (shinjitai) have been unified under the Unicode standard. Although the old and new forms are distinguished under the JIS X 0213 standard, the old forms map to Unicode CJK Compatibility Ideographs which are considered by Unicode to be canonically equivalent to the new forms and may not be distinguished by user agents. Therefore, depending on the user environment, it may not be possible to see the distinction between old and new forms of the characters. In particular, all Unicode normalization methods merge the old characters with the new ones.
For example, 万 is the simplified form of 萬. Note that 弁 is used to simplify three different traditional characters (辨, 瓣, and 辯).
The characters are sorted by the radicals of the Japanese kanji. The two kokuji 働 and 畑, which have no Chinese equivalents, are not listed here. See also the section § Differences in simplification between China and Japan above.
The following kyōiku kanji are characters of Group 1 (not simplified in either language, e.g. 田). For characters of Group 2 (same simplification in China and Japan, but a traditional form exists, e.g. 万-萬-万), see § Differences in simplification between China and Japan above.
The order is "Modern Japanese -Traditional Chinese - Simplified Chinese", e.g. 両-兩-两. Some characters were simplified the same way in both languages, the others were simplified in one language only.