Shirukan

Retro kanji lookup with furigana, strokes & X-Ray

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Hey Product Hunt, I’m Matt, a solo maker and Japanese learner. Shirukan started from a very old personal frustration. Years ago I spent some time in Japan. Before going there I thought my Japanese was “not bad”. Then real life happened: messages, signs, menus, normal conversations and I realized how often I could read kana, but still feel lost when kanji appeared. Back then Japanese learning often felt heavy. Big Kodansha dictionaries, printed kanji indexes, endless searching by radicals and stroke counts. Useful, yes, but slow. I remember seeing those small electronic Japanese dictionaries in Japan, the Casio and Seiko devices that looked almost like calculators. You could type, search, check readings, meanings, kanji. For me they were objects of pure envy. They were expensive and completely out of my reach, but I never forgot that feeling: “I wish I had something like this.” Years later, that same problem was still there for me in a smaller daily form. I would type something in kana, but I was not always sure which kanji was the right one. Japanese keyboards can suggest kanji, of course, but for me the missing piece was meaning, reading, and quick confidence. I didn’t want to open a huge dictionary every time. I wanted something I could open mid-message, check fast, understand, and close. So I built Shirukan. At first it was supposed to be almost painfully simple: type kana → get kanji. That was it. But while testing it, I realized the useful moment is a little deeper than that. Sometimes you need pronunciation. Sometimes you need stroke order. Sometimes you need an example sentence. And sometimes you just stare at a character and think: “Why does it look like this?” That’s why I added Kanji X-Ray, a visual breakdown of kanji components with memory hints. For example: 森 = 木 + 木 + 木 → forest 森林 = forest / woods Kanji X-Ray is not meant to replace academic etymology. It is a practical memory aid for learners: something that helps you see the character, not just memorize it blindly. I also gave Shirukan a retro CRT interface because old Japanese movies and old monochrome screens are part of how Japan first lived in my imagination. It is a small personal touch, but it makes the app feel less like a database and more like a little kanji terminal. Shirukan is a PWA, works offline for the core lookup, has no accounts, no tracking, and uses open Japanese language datasets. I built it in vanilla JavaScript. There are already many excellent Japanese dictionaries and kanji tools. I’m not trying to replace them. Shirukan is for a specific moment: when you want to quickly turn kana, romaji, or handwriting into kanji you can actually understand. I’d really love feedback on three things: A. does the fast lookup flow feel useful? B. does Kanji X-Ray help, or should it be presented differently? C. does the retro CRT style make the app memorable, or is it too much? Thanks for taking a look 🙏