Customer Reviews

Kanji Power: A Workbook for Mastering Japanese Characters (Tuttle Language Library)

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i am currently living in japan, studying japanese. i bought this before coming in order to study kanji. the book expressly advertises itself as a beginners book, but it isn't. when studying any individual kanji, you are expected to remember many more difficult kanji for each "6 kanji" check test. personally, i cannot remember kanji without writing it. i have showed the book's check tests to japanese co-workers who say they are really difficult, and they are fluently bilingual. i now study with kids drill books, grade one and two, and kanji power is useful as a dictionary with these drills, but as a stand alone book, it is incredibly intimidating.

I have a bunch of kanji books, but Kanji Power is my favorite. I'm not a big fan of the kind that give you mnemonics to help remember the kanji, because then the mnemonic is just another thing to remember. I do pretty well with just plain memorization.

For each kanji entry, the following details are provided: on-yomi, kun-yomi, meaning, explanation of the character's shape, example sentences, common compounds, and writing practice (with tips on writing them correctly). I like that the readings are written in kana, because I'm always suspicious of romaji. Also, it helps me remember them better.

There are also quizzes and tests, but I don't find them useful. While all the kanji compounds it tests you on are listed in the kanji entry, they're not words I find very useful or common. For example, the entry for "shi/ichi" (city, market) includes these "common" compounds: "shikyou" (market conditions), "shichou" (mayor), "shiyakusho" (city hall), and "kabushiki-shijou" (stock exchange).

Personally, I like Hadamitzky and Spahn's way of showing compounds. Only compounds with kanji that have been learned previously are used. That way, even if the words aren't so common, you can write the whole word. However, I don't like the way they order the kanji, and learning them out of order makes that feature pointless.

This book shows where not to make mistakes when writing characters(lines sticking out in wrong places, how to space lines)and has plenty of example sentences. It has many tests to see how you are doing. However, material in the tests are sometimes different than actual studied material. Full reading of kanji are given in the book.

I have found this to be a very useful book. I like the practice exercises. However,the tests are a little difficult, in large part because they contain kanji characters not yet learned (or even of a higher level than the book). This makes them a bit discouraging.
Also the lack of an index can be rather frustrating.

Kanji Power presents the level 1 and 2 joyo kanji, which Japanese kids learn in their first two years of school. Learning by frequency of occurence (such as with many of the kanji cards available) may be a better approach, depending on your goals. If you want to read children's books and the like, go with the joyo ordering -- you'll get furigana for higher-level kanji.

The presentation is fairly rote, like how it's taught in the schools, which will prove more effective for some than others. I personally need mnemonics and am interested in how the kanjis came to be, but I have Kanji Pictographix and Read Japanese Today for this purpose.

Although, compared to others I've tried, this workbook has a better selection of common and unusual usage and related vocabulary for each kanji, I have some gripes about it.

The publisher put too much effort into saving paper.

I mean, it's great that they didn't put a whole page of practice grids for each kanji (that's way too much for the simpler kanji, and you can use your own paper if you need that much). In fact, they could reduce the three 3 lines of calligraphy practice to 2. But the workbook is undersized, for one thing. It's only 7" by 11" by 1/2" thick, and excluding the answer key, only registers 175 pages!

To do this, they made the Japanese text really small! I can barely read the furigana in sentences, and have a hard time even with some of the sentence kanji. It's okay for the English to be on the small side, but then you need the kanji to be larger than the English.

Also, in trying to cram a lot into a small spot (1/2 undersized page per kanji), they don't define some compunds used in the sentences, while putting just a few other compounds on the right. This makes it hard to understand the structure of the sentence -- not that I expect it to be a grammar book -- but for some of the phrases and sentences a "literal translation" in parenthesis is needed. Otherwise, the sentence is totally useless, since you can't understand it and therefore remember the phraseology for future reference. Anything you put in the book, if it isn't self-explanatory, explain it.

My real beef (besides the size) is the quizzes. There are a few kanji combinations not in the lessons, which you are expected to be able to "sound out" in hiragana.

The main problem with the quizzes is the lines are very small and you have to write TINY! The quizzes (which cover 6 kanji and their uses and compounds) are only given 1/2 page! Every quiz should be a full page.

When you do a quiz, you can barely read your own writing -- especially if you do it in pencil (the paper is the poor kind where pencil doesn't show well). Of course, you want to use pencil so you can erase and repeat the lessons after a little time.

And each group of questions should be ordered easy-to-hard. For example, for numbers, count different types of things, then do the things like place names, colliquialisms, and so forth. As it is, they often start by giving you compounds with other kanji and having you write the hiragana for them, which goes against the natural inclination to focus on the target kanji first.

It would be better to first give the hiragana and ask for the definition, which helps you remember the kanji, then ask for the hiragana for some compound kanji later in the quiz. The quizzes should be expanded and include all the compounds demonstrated in the lesson.

I would also say each kanji entry should have its own page, but if the book was a larger size (like 8.5" x 11" or 8.5" x 12"), that wouldn't even be necessary. The listings are arranged well enough. But it definitely needs a full page per quiz!

The whole point of a "workbook" is to give a place to do WORK!

This book, even though I have yet to finish the work, provides an immense amount of information. So much Kanji to help beginners learn. I took an elementary Japanese course at a local community course and my teacher recommended this book. With it's repetitive work, it helps the new student of this dense language, learn the different strokes for each Kanji symbol. I highly recommended for those who are learning Japanese. The more Kanji you know, the more experience with the language you will gain.