In this report we presented a case of semantic category-specific deficits accompanied by alexia and agraphia of kanji after herpes simplex encephalitis. We found that the subject tended to make numerous errors that share the same category and same number of moras, especially for living items. Learning names of tools improved rapidly, but corresponding progress was not seen in naming of living items. We attempted to improve naming of living items using materials that present the character indicating the initial sound of each target word together with their picture as the phonetic cue. The results revealed improved in performance on all naming tasks, and improvement was sustained even after improved removing the phonetic cues. Based on the result of rehabilitation for confrontation naming with phonetic cues and assessment of the subjectʼs errors, we concluded that his problems were caused by weak interaction between the semantic level and phonetic level in lexical access, with differentiation in semantic systems according to category.