Once your N5 kanji are writable, N4 is the next step, and it is a meaningful jump: roughly twice as many characters, and a noticeable increase in complexity. The encouraging part is that you already have everything you need. The routine that made N5 stick is exactly the one that makes N4 stick; you just point it at a bigger, harder set.
What N4 adds
N4 builds directly on N5. Many N4 characters are made from N5 components, stacked or combined, so the set grows in two directions at once: more characters, and more strokes per character. This is why the gap between recognizing and writing widens at N4. You will still recognize the characters from reading, but producing them from memory asks for more detail, and detail is what fades when it is not practised, the familiar lesson that recognition is not recall, from recognition versus recall. None of this is a problem; it just means writing practice earns its keep more at N4 than it did at N5.
N5 to N4: what actually gets harder
The jump is not just more characters; it is more of several things at once:
| Dimension | N5 | N4 |
|---|---|---|
| Approx. new kanji | around 80 to 100 | roughly double |
| Strokes per character | mostly low | noticeably higher |
| Built from components | a few | most are stacked N5 parts |
| Look-alike confusions | rare | common enough to matter |
Reading down the N4 column tells you where to spend effort: decomposition, and telling similar characters apart.
The routine does not change
Your N4 writing routine is the same loop you already run:
- Take a few N4 characters. See the meaning and reading, then hide the character.
- Write it from memory, breaking complex characters into known parts and following the order.
- Reveal a guide only when stuck, note the slip, and write it again correctly.
- Let the ones you miss come back sooner with a spaced schedule.
The producing step is what matters, because every honest attempt is retrieval, the testing effect. If stroke order is your sticking point at N4, the JLPT N4 stroke-order drills routine is the same idea aimed specifically at order, and the broader JLPT N5 kanji writing practice habit is the foundation you are extending.
Lean harder on decomposition
The one habit that pays off more at N4 is decomposition. When a character looks like too many strokes, resist memorizing it whole and instead name its parts, which are almost all N5 components you can already write. A daunting N4 character is usually two or three friends in a familiar arrangement, and the stroke order is just the rules applied across them. This is the same approach we lay out in how to remember difficult kanji, and it is what keeps N4 from feeling like a wall of unfamiliar shapes.
A worked N4 session
A realistic N4 session: you see a character, hide it, and write it from memory, getting the left radical but fumbling the right side. You reveal the guide, see that the right side is two N5 components you know, and write the whole thing again correctly. Next, a character you have seen a few times comes out cleanly, so it drifts to a longer interval. Next, a brand-new one you decompose and write twice. Five minutes, eight characters, each a real attempt, with spacing choosing the mix. Over a couple of weeks, the simpler N4 characters become automatic, and the complex ones yield to repeated spaced production. You add fewer new characters per day than at N5, because reviews stack faster, and that is exactly right.
Manage the load and keep going
The main practical adjustment at N4 is to let the spacing control your daily volume. As the set grows, reviews fill more of your session, so add new characters more slowly, fitting them in after the due ones, as we discuss in how many kanji to practise writing a day. Keep the session short and daily, and the larger N4 set stays in writing range a few minutes at a time. Then the same routine carries you into N3, as in our JLPT N3 kanji writing practice guide. Kanji Write Practice organizes kanji into JLPT sets and runs the drill for you, free in early access.
A common N4 sticking point
One thing genuinely catches people at N4: the number of characters that look or sound similar and start blurring together as the set grows. At N5 there were few enough kanji that confusions were rare; at N4, with roughly double the characters, look-alike pairs and words that share a kanji multiply, and recognition alone lets them collapse into each other. The fix is the same writing habit, used deliberately on the confusable ones: when two N4 characters keep tangling, practise them side by side, producing each from memory and noticing the one component or stroke that tells them apart. Writing forces the distinction that recognition glosses over, which is exactly the approach in how to stop confusing similar-looking kanji. So if N4 feels less like learning new characters and more like keeping a growing crowd of similar ones straight, that is normal, and producing them by hand is what separates them. Build that into your drill and the larger N4 set stays orderly rather than turning into a blur.
