Chinese characters database is a great resource for Sinology and an important way for describing the usage of Chinese characters and preserving the culture of Chinese characters. Chinese characters are being used not only in Mandarin but also in other languages. For instance, Chinese characters are still widely used in Japanese language. However, they have been modified when they are used in other languages. Most designs of Chinese and Japanese Kanji databases focus on expressing the glyphs and codes, but these databases could not preserve the varied implications and cultural values through the use of Kanji in Japan.The purpose of this research is to establish a knowledge base to represent the dissemination and variation of Chinese characters in Japan. This knowledge base can represent the variation of Chinese characters used in Japan, the relation between Chinese characters and Japanese, and the cultural significance of the spread of Chinese characters. The content of the knowledge base built in this study includes the spread of glyphs, pronunciations and senses of Chinese characters, Man'yogana, the morphological differences of words in Chinese and Japanese, the variants of the dictionary in Edo and Meiji period, the connection with Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants of Ministry of Education. The design of this study can not only be used to represent the usage of Chinese characters in Japan, but also can be applied to other area and language.