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I'm a Japanese learner, and I've begun to tackle the very overwhelming (and seemingly insane) task of learning Kanji. I've tried different methods of learning Kanji (Writing them over and over, flashcards, etc.), and I have found this to be the most effective book/method in UNDERSTANDING Kanji. You learn key characters that make up Kanji characters; therefore when you learn a Kanji character. You'll say to yourself, "So that small character means "xxxx" and that other character means "xxxx." So I put the two together, and the Kanji means "xxxx." That makes sense." Rather then trying to mash into your brain the way of reading a Kanji you're unfamiliar with, you learn the concept of understanding the Kanji. You learn the pronunciation later. But that's also the only downside. In order to commit to this great system of remembering Kanji, you have to be serious about it. So anybody that just wants to "skim" Kanji, I don't suggest you use this book. It takes commitment, and it takes time. But it pays off in the long run.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
The format of the book is to intoduce the simpler kanji first, and use sets of components which you learn before learning the associated kanji, thereby avoiding giving you kanji with unknown components. This allows you to create a stronger association between the character visually and its meaning, leaving the image much clearer in your mind. But if you want to use the book afterwards for looking up a kanji that you can't remember, then you would be much better off with a kanji dictionary or similar. Some other works have better facilities for looking up kanji, but most of the books that cover all of the every-day use (joyo) kanji are significantly more expensive than this. The stroke order numbering can also be confusing (the numbers are sometimes placed so that determining which line it refers to is difficult). If you want to quickly learn a core set of kanji that you can use, or want to be able to look up the kani you see rather than learn them all, then get another book. If, however, you want to learn the joyo kanji (something every serious student of japanese should aim to do), then this book could be of great assistance for your studies
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful
This book is a must buy. It simplifies the learning process and categorizes the characters by grouping them according to shape and meaning. With so many SIMILAR characters to learn, it is vital to have an effective system for memorizing and distinguishing them. Some characters are so similar that many students give up for this reason alone. No other book has been able to effectively group characters in a system for memorizing.
One of the most practical applications of this book is that it is laid out in such a way, that you can photocopy each page onto cardstock and make your own study cards. After copying, I folded mine horizontally along the lines so I could alternate guessing at the meaning or guessing at the character readings. I don't think the publisher even thought of this, but it works! Another great element about this book is that beside each character is shown the meaning of each complex root. For instance "irodo(ru), SAI" has the meaning of "color" and comes from the root of "harvest" and "style." At the beginning of the book, you are taught each individual root, called graphemes, so you can easily pick out which part of the complex character means harvest and which means style. Also, beside each character is reference numbers so you may look them up in dictionaries for further study. And, one of the most important things for me is that this books contains all of the joyo kanji, "the 1,945 characters recommended for everyday use by the Japanese government." The graphemes are also numbered for stroke order so that you may practice writing. It is a great place to start, and you may find out at the end you are way ahead of everbody else! This book makes learning Japanese as easy as, well, ABC.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
This book is a great help for finding tricks to learn kanji characters more quickly. However, I don't think it's sufficient on its own to really complete learning these characters.
The book is divided into two parts; Part I is a repertoire of around 250 "graphemes", kanji "pieces" that are used to build up actual kanji characters, but may not necessarily form characters of their own. If that sounds like the definition of a "radical", well good: they're closely related. However, there are various graphemes that are not officially considered radicals, so you might consider the graphemes to be a superset of the radicals.
Each grapheme is associated with an english word or phrase. The book is fairly careful to use different words for very similar meanings, so that you can manage to keep them separate.
Part II is a list of two thousand kanji characters, ordered in such a way as to make full use of the graphemes learned. The kanji are ordered so that the characters only use those graphemes that have already been introduced in the associated group from Part I. Each character is listed along with only its very most common readings (kun and on), and a list of the english words representing the graphemes from which it has been built (which appear in an index at the back of the book).
The book is intended to be used in one of two ways: one way (the way I've chosen to use it) is to learn all of the graphemes in Part I (or at least a large number), and then use Part II to look up characters you wish to learn, and see which graphemes it is made up of. Of course, in reality, you wouldn't normally need to look them up to begin with if you know all the graphemes: you'll recognize them in the characters themselves.Read more ›
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