Customer Reviews

Read Japanese Today: The Easy Way to Learn 400 Practical Kanji (Tuttle Languge Library)

5 star:		(26)
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3 star:		(2)
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Anyone learning or considering learning Japanese should read this book ASAP, even before looking at the kana or a grammar text (before considering books for these things, search out "The Quick and Dirty Guide to Japanese" and a good free kana drill program, if you want to save yourself time and money). The kanji are easy to memorize, given explanations of what they are supposed to look like. After reading it, kanji won't look like bizarre unreadable symbols, but familiar pictures of common things.

Those pictures will make learning spoken vocabulary far easier than trying to learn spoken Japanese without the writing.

Once you have it, take a whole day and read it through like a novel - twice if you have time. After that, you will be shocked at how much you retain. The title is not an exaggeration; after one day, you can be reading Japanese (though you'll need to learn the kana; this book has a simple section on that too).

If you want to learn to read kanji, there's no faster or easier way to pick up the basics than reading this book. When Walsh promises you'll be able to read basic Japanese after "Read Japanese Today", he's not kidding. And the way it's written, you read it like you would fiction or easy non-ficiton and you pick up the Japanese characters without even realizing it!

The formidable hieroglyphic writing system used by Japanese is perhaps the most intimidating challenge, among many, for native English speakers. Adopted from the ancient Chinese script in the 3rd century, the Japanese written word can seem indecipherable at first glance, like a modern Rosetta Stone. But Len Walsh actually makes sense of it in this splendid little book. He organizes each character group into categories like tools, animals, derivatives of the hand, money, and the like. He shows how the Chinese script began with approximations of basic, concrete objects in nature-- the hand, the sun, the mouth, the eye, the horse, the dog, and so on-- and then began to encompass abstract concepts via metaphors, stories, and incidents involving the concrete ones. You see how the basic characters, squared off and standardized to allow for easy writing, are incorporated as radicals into more complex ones, and how compounds are formed to represent basic concepts. And since you'll learn this history, you'll learn how to glean the meaning of a character based on its constituents. You learn, for example, how the character for "mura" ("village") came about, uniting the radicals for "tree" and "law" (the latter itself a metaphorical extension of a character for "measure"), with the village symbolizing a social structure that brought law out of the tree-lined jungle. You'll learn how the character for "name" (Japanese "na" or "mei") arose from a combination of "evening" and "mouth"-- stemming from an ancient Chinese practice of sentries demanding the names of passersby at night. Thus you not only learn the characters themselves, but gain an insight into ancient Chinese and Japanese culture.

Each character is not only drawn out and linked to a word in English; its reading (pronunciation) in Japanese is given as well. Japanese characters generally have multiple readings, which vary depending on whether the character is used as a standalone word in a sentence, or one character in a compound that represents another word (e.g. a stone being "ishi" by itself and "seki"-- as in "sekiyu," petroleum-- in compounds). The standalone reading is usually native Japanese, while the reading in compounds is quite frequently borrowed from the equivalent Chinese word-- although just as French-derived English words, derived usually from Old/Middle French, differ from modern French, the modern Chinese equivalent will often vary somewhat from the Japanese. Walsh illustrates the history of the characters based on the Shuo Wen Chie Tsu, the classic source from the 2nd Century A.D. explicating the origin of the Chinese characters. Walsh's own drawings are lucid and comprehensible, and the story of many characters' origins often quite humorous (still trying to figure out how "mono," meaning "thing," arose from the combination of a cow and an elephant). In any case, you should pick up this book even if you intend only to learn spoken Japanese. You'll acquire a feel for how the vast majority of Japanese words were assembled from simpler compounds, and you'll sense the logic of the design. A very highly recommended book.

I've read and reread this work since buying it many years ago. It came in handy when we traveled to Japan: I actually understood much of what I was looking at--at least on signage--while the overwhelming majority of tourists stared dumfounded. A word of advice: I would look into Chinese first--please check out Diane Wolff's marvelous "Chinese for Beginners"--inasmuch as Japanese writing was built on top of Chinese. You'll get much more out of Walsh if you read Wolff first. Also, don't think for a moment that, just because you recognize a kanji, you know the meaning of the phrase in which it appears. We learned the hard way that the Japanese mind combines characters and components of characters in _very_ peculiar ways--it was often quite a surprise when a native told us what that sign over there actually meant after we told him what we ambitious gaijin thought it meant! Walsh's book cannot possibly equip you in only a couple of hundred pages to understand why "lawful-language" means "French," or why "self-move-concentrate-mind" means "Caution: automatic door"--or why "water" means "Wednesday" on that poster! Also, bear in mind that some of Walsh's explanations for the derivation of various kanji are suspect. That doesn't really matter, of course, if his mnemonic helps you remember it--as long as you're not a philologist. Take it for what it's worth, and enjoy your heart out!

As a first kanji book, this is excellent; it got me hooked on learning kanji. It's short but straight to the point, and very easy to read. It starts off describing how the simpler characters came to be, and builds on these as it shows how they are combined to form the more complex characters.

In total, about 250 characters are explained. The book gives some readings (in romaji) for each character, and example compounds in some cases too. There are no mnemonics for learning the readings, however, and the book does not describe how to write the characters.

Some of the etymologies differ from more accepted versions. For example, "iro" (colour) is described as a person leaning over a window rather than over another person. However, the author's interpretations do have great mnemonic value. Generally, he is very good at tying the original meaning of a character to its modern meaning; sometimes they may appear to be unrelated, but he is able to make them seem logically connected, which is what makes them memorable.

I recommend this as your first kanji book. It requires only a very small investment in money and time, and is fun to read. And it will give you a good grounding in kanji recognition for when you move on to a more thorough book.

I just bought this book two days ago and cannot put it down. Mr Walsh gives a good account of how the Chinese first devised their pictographic writing system, and how it was later borrowed by the Japanese. He supplies each kanji with a mnemonic device that makes it easy to remember. The book is written such that it is very accessible to the complete beginner. I agree with the reviewer who recommended getting this book as a first introduction to learning the kanji. To learn the kana, I would recommend Heisig's "Remembering the Hiragana" and Morsbach and Heisig's "Remembering the Katakana".

This is a really fun and engaging book because it reads almost like story. I read it while I was in Japan (having no previous background in the language, and having never been there) and found the book extremely helpful getting around! After reading the book I was able to understand quite a bit of written Japanese, particularly signs and other travel related messages. My traveling buddies were completely astounded as I squinted at these Japanese signs and other scrolling information, thought about it for a few moments, and then confidently pointed, "It's THAT WAY!" They couldn't believe it! Even _I_ was impressed! This book is amazing!

I absolutely love this book. I bought my copy at the Kinokuniya bookstore at Umeda station in Osaka. Before I read it, I thought there was no way my mind would ever be able to read Japanese, but author Len Walsh opened my eyes, my mind, and my heart. This book was the gateway for me to fall head over heels in love with everything Japan-related -- and I ended up finishing a BA in Japanese language and lit upon my return to the U.S.

Walsh takes the basic 300 characters and breaks them down by picture, explaining everything in the most simple manner. Once you grasp the foundations of kanji by "seeing" the characters as pictures, it will all begin to make sense.

I'm so thrilled it's still in print, though it was originally published in 1969. I highly recommend this book!

This book covers many common words encountered in travel, presented with their origins and development, which makes them easy to remember. It's also an interesting read just to see how some common characters developed.

I highly recommend this book for anyone travelling to Japan, but also those with a light interest in the history and development of the Chinese writing system. There are better books for those seeking serious kanji study.

...this is the book you'll want to get first. Many people studying the Japanese language, even those who have successfully learned the hiragana and katakana, become filled with anxiety at the prospect of kanji. If you really want to understand how Japanese words are constructed and by able to read and write proficiently, you'll need to at least become familiar with the kanji. Becoming familiar with the kanji is the step you must take BEFORE trying to diligently memorize all of them. You will probably get bored and disinterested if you try to start from the beginning and rigorously attempt to learn and master the stroke order, pronunciation, English meaning, and how to use them in words and sentences! Before you even come close to doing that, it is important to grasp what kanji are first.
This book is arranged in a "building block" style; the book continually builds on what it has just taught you. The origins of Japanese writing, how the characters were constructed, how they came from China, and so on. This book does not have the style of a textbook at all; it is a very informative overview of the meanings of around 300 common Japanese kanji and how they have changed from their ancient pictograph forms. For example, Section Two begins with showing how the character for sun (which originally looked very much like a sun) developed into the more square form that it is today. Thematically-related characters are discussed next to one another; the next character, "tree" precedes "root/origin". Then the word "nihon" (literally "sun-origin"), which means Japan, is introduced. As you can see, kanji are introduced slowly and in a matter-of-fact way that won't result in any confusion as to their meaning. The book is short enough to be able to read in one or two sittings and afterwards I guarantee that you'll find that you are able to recognize most (if not all!) of the characters introduced in this book. You'll have a clear understanding of their pictograph origins in China and you'll understand that they are symbols for concepts and are used in words.