How to read Japanese knitting charts in English

Japanese knitting charts are not harder than English ones — they are laid out differently. If you can read English patterns, you can learn the Japanese system in about ninety minutes. The challenge isn't complexity. It's that English-language knitting resources rarely teach the JIS L 0201 standard, the public-domain industrial notation that every Japanese pattern uses.

The two things that confuse every new reader

Almost every beginner walks away from their first Japanese chart for the same two reasons.

One: the blank cell. In a Japanese chart, a cell with nothing in it is not "do nothing." It is a knit stitch. The JIS L 0201 standard treats the plain knit-on-Right-Side as the implicit default, so a blank square means "knit." Western charts sometimes mark knit explicitly with a small vertical bar; Japanese charts almost never do. This convention makes Japanese charts look beautifully clean — every decrease, increase, and cable jumps off the page — but it also makes them look unfinished to readers who expect every cell to be filled.

Two: the reading direction. Japanese charts are read from bottom to top (like Western charts), but the row direction is consistent with how you knit: Right-Side rows are read right-to-left, Wrong-Side rows are read left-to-right. This is the same rule as Western charts — but Japanese pattern books rarely state it explicitly, because to a Japanese reader, of course it works that way. To a Western reader landing on a JP chart for the first time, the expectation might be "left-to-right because that's how I read text" — which is wrong.

Blank cell = knit. RS rows right-to-left, WS rows left-to-right. If you remember only these two rules, you can read 60% of any Japanese chart.

The JIS standard, in one paragraph

JIS L 0201:1995 is the Japanese Industrial Standard that defines the visual symbols for knit chart notation. It is not copyrighted — it's industrial standardization, similar to ISO safety pictograms or the SI unit symbols. Anyone can draw and use these symbols. The standard covers around 80 symbols spanning stitches, decreases, increases, cables, and decorative patterns; in practice about 30 cover 95% of patterns you'll encounter.

The 12 symbols you'll see most often

If you learn these twelve, you can read most lace, cable, and texture charts. Each one below is mapped to its Western equivalent so you can knit it using whatever notation you already know.

The naming logic that flips your brain

Here is the single most useful thing to internalize: Japanese decrease and cable names describe which stitch ends up on top, not which direction the result leans. Western names do the opposite — they describe the lean.

右上2目一度 means "right stitch on top, 2 worked together one time." The right stitch covers the left, which makes the result lean left. In Western terminology, the same stitch is called SSK (slip, slip, knit) — named after the steps, with the lean implied.

The same logic applies to cables. 右上1目交差 means "right stitch on top in a 1-stitch cross." The right stitch sits in front; the result leans right. In Western notation it's C2B / 1/1 RC — "cable 2 back" or "1/1 right cross."

If you try to translate the Japanese name word-for-word into English without flipping the logic — "right on top must mean it leans right" — you will misread every decrease in the chart. Forget the literal translation; remember top stitch covers, then look at the lean.

Japanese shaping notation: 2-1-3 and friends

Japanese sleeve and armhole shaping is written in a compact three-number format: rows-stitches-times (in Japanese: 段-目-回). You'll see entries like:

• 2-1-3 — every 2 rows, decrease 1 stitch, 3 times. Total: 6 rows, 3 decreases.
• 4-1-5 — every 4 rows, decrease 1 stitch, 5 times. Total: 20 rows, 5 decreases.
• 2-2-2 — every 2 rows, decrease 2 stitches, 2 times. Total: 4 rows, 4 stitches removed.

Read the column header to confirm direction (decrease vs. increase, RS vs. WS). The notation is dense, but once you've decoded a few, it's faster than Western prose ("decrease 1 stitch every 4 rows 5 times, then every 2 rows 3 times") — there's no language ambiguity.

A worked example

Try reading this fragment from a hypothetical Japanese lace chart, RS row, reading right to left:

⬚ ╱ ○ ⬚ ⬚ ○ ╲ ⬚

From right to left: knit, knit, SSK (left lean), YO, knit, knit, YO, K2tog (right lean), knit. In Western written notation: K2, YO, K2tog, K2, SSK, YO, K2. Stitch count unchanged (the YOs and decreases pair up), and you've made the centerline of a leaf-shaped lace motif.

Next steps

Print the symbol card list, open the Japanese pattern you've been avoiding, and read just the first row. Don't knit yet — just read. If you can identify each symbol as one of the twelve above, knit a swatch of the first eight rows. Wash and block. The chart will start to make visual sense in a way no amount of pre-reading prepares you for.

Knit Atlas embeds these symbols and translations directly into the pattern reader on your phone, so you can tap a symbol in any chart and see the English equivalent without juggling a paper key. But the goal is that you learn to read without the crutch, the way you'd learn any new language.