Here are the most frequently used 1000 Kanji in the Japanese language according to a survey of 55 million characters done by the National Language Research Institute. It includes 993 main entry characters found in levels A and B of the Joyo Kanji lists. Presented for you are the individual Kanji and below the English root word, that is the keyword that gives the most concise meaning. Some of the English meanings have additional words in parentheses, this was added to clarify certain meanings. For example, in English "light" can mean light in weight, light in color, or light from the sun. There are also entries in brackets, these are not actual root words, but used to indicate conceptual Kanji such as counters or grammatical stems. If you can see, there are numbers on the bottom, the middle number is the character entry number found in _The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary_ which is the source material and a very useful book, and the frequency number on the right.
I don't know how else to climb this mountain of Kanji other than to take it one step at a time. There are no readings presented here, since each Kanji has anywhere from one reading to a dozen. This presentation is just the first 1000 Kanji, there are more than 1000 to go. Combinations of two or more Kanji make up over 10,000 words and form the majority of concepts in the Japanese language. Please leave any comments or questions. Will consider suggestions for further projects.
MUSIC: Sigur Ros ( ) Untitled track #3, and Explosions in the Sky "Your Hand in Mine" (less info)