Thursday August 27 2026 Content Updates

Kanji

万 (3) - Changed the radical combination from Leaf + Sword to Ground + Prison, updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

代 (5) - Added “era” as an alternative meaning, moved “replace,” “period,” and “age” to the allow list, added “substitution” and “replacement” to the allow list, added “fee” and “charge” to the warning list, and updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

数 (8) - Updated the reading mnemonic and reading hint.

別 (11) - Changed the radical combination from Mouth + Sword + Knife, to Mouth + Prison + Knife, updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

成 (11) - Changed the radical combination from Drunkard + Sword, to Prison + Drunkard, updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

腕 (24) - Added “ability,” “skill,” “talent,” and “competence” to the allow list, and added “strength” and “physical strength” to the warning list.

枢 (42) - Updated the meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

遮 (57) - Updated the reading mnemonic and reading hint.

崇 (59) - Updated the meaning mnemonic, meaning hint, reading mnemonic, and reading hint.

Vocabulary

三十代 (5) - Added “your thirties,” “your 30s,” and “your 30’s” to the allow list, and updated the meaning explanation.

〜丁目 (7) - Changed the primary meaning to “city district”, added “chome” as an alternative meaning, moved “town district,” “district,” and “district of a town” to the allow list, added “choume,” “block,” “district of a city,” “city neighborhood,” and “neighborhood of a city” to the allow list, added “street,” “street number,” and “neighborhood” to the warning list, updated the meaning explanation and reading explanation, updated four common word combinations, and updated three context sentence translations.

時代 (7) - Updated the meaning explanation.

一番目 (10) - Updated the meaning explanation.

大学院生 (12) - Added “graduate school student” to the allow list.

一代 (12) - Updated the meaning explanation.

近代的 (14) - Updated the meaning explanation.

外面 (16) - Added “outer surface” to the allow list.

駅弁 (18) - Added “station box lunch” to the allow list.

年代順 (19) - Updated the meaning explanation.

肩 (24) - Added one context sentence translation.

腕 (24) - Added “ability” and “skill” as alternative meanings, added “talent,” “competence,” “strength,” and “physical strength” to the allow list, updated the meaning explanation, and added four context sentence translations.

右腕 (26) - Added “right-hand person,” “right-hand man,” and “right-hand woman” as alternative meanings, and updated the meaning explanation.

幼年時代 (28) - Updated the meaning explanation.

筋肉 (33) - Added one context sentence translation.

潰す (35) - Added “to rush” to the block list.

潰れる (37) - Added “to be rushed” to the block list.

束縛 (56) - Moved “shackles” and “confinement” to the allow list, added “fetters,” “yoke,” “tying down,” “tie down,” “constraint,” “constrain,” “restricting,” “restrict,” “restraining,” and “restrain” to the allow list, added “possession,” “possessiveness,” “possess,” “control,” “controlling,” “chain,” and “chains” to the warning list, updated the meaning explanation, added nine common word combinations, and added two context sentence translations.

醸造 (57) - Added “brew” to the allow list, moved “distillation” to the warning list, added “distilling,” “distil,” “distill,” “make,” “making,” “produce,” and “producing” to the warning list, updated the meaning explanation, added nine common word combinations, and added three context sentence translations.

I would only like to say thank you for this kind of update information:

“changed FROM … TO…”

Could you please keep it that way? It’s way more informative <3

I like the new reading story for 万 MAN

Mnemonic
To entertain the inmates, the prison is stocked with ten thousand volumes of manga (まん).

Hi, thanks for the update, I also find it nicer, but the data API has an issue.**

TLDR;** The API still returns the old radical combinations for 万, 別 and 成


Summary from AI

The three radical combination changes in this list are live on the website, but the API still returns the old ones. The mnemonics in the API were updated, so the API now contradicts itself.

From api.wanikani.com/v2/subjects, checked today (2026-09-11):

kanji API component_subject_ids API means website shows
万 (495) [8763, 24] Leaf + Sword Ground + Prison
別 (785) [16, 24, 128] Mouth + Sword + Knife Mouth + Prison + Knife
成 (780) [194, 24] Drunkard + Sword Prison + Drunkard

All three have data_updated_at of 2026-08-27 and return the new meaning mnemonic. So 別’s mnemonic says “you smuggle into <radical>prison</radical> the parts necessary to make a crude <radical>knife</radical>”, while its component list says Sword.

The radical back-links are wrong too:

  • Prison (14): amalgamation_subject_ids has none of 495, 780, 785. Its data_updated_at is 2026-03-23, so this update never touched it.
  • Sword (24): still has 780 (成). Updated 2026-08-27T17:38:34.259, the same second as 成.
  • Leaf (8763): still has 495 (万). Updated 2026-08-27T17:36:38.084, the same second as 万.
  • Ground (1): does not have 495. Updated 2026-08-19.

So the radical records were rewritten on Aug 27, but with the old relations. As a result, no radical lists 万 or 別 at all.

The website is correct: /radicals/prison shows all three in “Found in Kanji”, and /radicals/sword shows none of them.

This looks like the same half-published change as 綱 in 2023 (post 30 here).

Third-party apps that build radical breakdowns from the API show the wrong radicals for these three kanji.


I’ll send a bug report to hello@wanikani.com as well.

Closing the loop that we’ve submitted this as an issue. Thanks!

Are there any ways to see the old mnemonics?

I have one big complaint — that changing mnemonics really affects the study.

When you are using WaniKani for studying over a long period of time (1–2 years), you’ve already gotten used to that mnemonic for すう being “sue”. And suddenly it changed to “soup”.

You forgot the reading for one kanji, and you are not able to recall it correctly — because the mnemonic changed. If you want to start associating it with “soup”, you need to re-study other kanjis with the すう reading, which isn’t helpful at all and only wastes your time.

So at least it would be great if you could keep some button/toggle where you can see the old mnemonic for recently changed kanji/radicals.

Thank you!

At the moment - sadly no.

This took me by surprise the other day as well…

I already suggested it:

and @TofuguKyle replied that it would be passed for consideration to the team… it was a year ago :confused:

It would be really great to have a button that would open a “changelog” of what was changed (when and from what to what).

I know that some are doing speedruns and whatnot but right now my plan is to finish WK in 5 years (5 new items per day) which would mean a lot of flux in the meantime given more and more frequent updates… and it DOES affect recollection a lot when you are confused.

Thanks @wojtek !

I’m totally agree with you.
WaniKani is a long term commitment - minimum 2+ years.

The team should take it into account when they do some “breaking” changes.

Hey @wojtek & @max_kanji, I’ve started tracking WaniKani content changes on Wanilog: https://wanilog.com/content-updates

I’ve backfilled the Content Updates forum posts. Starting today, 20 September, I’m also taking daily snapshots of the WaniKani API to record specific changes, such as old → new mnemonics, readings and meanings.

Item pages now have a “Content history” box showing recorded changes to that item:

CleanShot 2026-09-20 at 11.18.31@2x

The forum archive provides historical descriptions, but usually not the exact previous wording. For changes detected from today onward, Wanilog can show the before-and-after values.

Awesome! <3

Hey WaniKani team @Mods maybe integrate WK with wanilog history (if it’s not possible for whicever reason to provide the history directly…)?

Thank you.
I am on a slow track so lots of these changes for me.
Great that Wk keep making improvements but I sometimes get uncertain whether it is my memory failing or an update.