The present study investigated the effects of visual complexity for kanji processing by selecting target kanji from different stroke ranges of visually simple (2-6 strokes), medium (8-12 strokes), and complex (14-20 strokes) kanji with high and low frequencies. A kanji lexical decision task in Experiment 1 and a kanji naming task in Experiment 2 were administered to native Japanese speakers. Results of both experiments showed that visual complexity inhibited the processing of low-frequency kanji, whereas such consistent, inhibitory effects of visual complexity were not observed in the processing of high-frequency kanji. Kanji with medium complexity were processed faster than simple and complex kanji in high frequency.