Kanji alive language data and media files are now freely available as open source

For what seems like a long time we’ve been meaning to make the language data and media files we created to build Kanji alive freely available for anyone to use under an open source license. Well, we finally did it!

Please visit our new open source repository on GitHub where you’ll find all of the language data used in Kanji alive in Excel and CSV spreadsheet formats, our custom Japanese Radicals font as well as all of our kanji animations, audio examples and image files. Everything (with just a handful of exceptions due to copyright restrictions) is freely available under a generous Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) license.

What does this mean in practice? Well, if you are a student, this means that you can copy all or part of our files and data onto your laptop or tablet to help you study Japanese even if you’re not connected to the internet, or perhaps re-use some of it to create your own Anki flash cards. If you are an instructor, it means, for example, that you can re-use our kanji animations or audio on your class website or on your institution’s course management system. And if you are a developer, it means that you are allowed to use this material to build (and even sell) your own kanji mobile app. Update: Developers, please take a look also at our public API on RapidAPI.

However, please note that under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, you must always give appropriate, public credit to Kanji alive, provide a public description of the changes (if any) you’ve made to our material  and offer a clear link back to our website (https://kanjialive.com). Lastly, you may not call your own work “Kanji alive” or re-use the Kanji alive logo. Please see our Credits page for additional details or contact us if you have any questions.

We’re very happy to be able to share all these items with you – they were the product of a great deal of hard work over many years by a group of dedicated and talented individuals.

Now we’re eager to find out what new & creative uses you’ll find for this material. Please let us know!

3 thoughts on “Kanji alive language data and media files are now freely available as open source

  1. shimke

    I am trying to use WWKanji and/or Kanji Alive, but when I bring it up I get a lot of gibberish – I guess where the Japanese writing should be.

    I am on a PC, with IE.

    Reply
    1. Kanji alive

      Hello shmke, sorry to hear you’re having problems using the app. Kanji alive definitely does work with Internet Explorer, but not with very old versions. As a starting point, have you already looked at our Troubleshooting page?

      Reply

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