Customer Reviews

A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tuttle language library)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A formidable work which I found essential as a beginning student of Japanese. It will last a lifetime as a text, or at least until the first 996 kanji are completely memorised, which WILL be a lifetime for me. The kanji are ordered in grades according to the 6-grade system used in Japanese schools. I found this useful because this relates to the graded system of testing used in the international Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It's not the way Japanese learn kanji but it is a fascinating source-book for those studying Japanese as a second language. Henshall discounts many common explanations of the origin of kanji eg for EAST, whose common explanation of "sun rising behind trees" he debunks as an error of many centuries standing. I did not give the book 5-stars for the following reasons: (1) It lacks stroke order, so I constantly have to cross-check new kanji with my Kanji Dictionary. (2) It uses romanji. I have come to absolutely subscribe to the theory of my first Japanese language teacher who banned romanji from the classroom and loudly lamented the corruption of thought and understanding it imposed on students of Japanese. Why people who have the interest and motivation to study kanji would want to do so in romanji is certainly beyond my understanding. But obviously Henshall and his editors have given this matter weighty thought and decided otherwise. This book fully deserves 5-stars, but the opportunity for a 5-star kanji guide remains open to others.

If you are learning Japanese, you probably already know that one of the most challenging elements is learning Kanji, the ideographic characters that make up a large portion of the written language. This book helps a lot with the Joyo Kanji, the nearly 2000 glyphs that are mandated by the Education Ministry for basic competence.

This book presents the characters in the order they are introduced to Japanese school children, so there's no risk of getting a complex, obscure Kanji until you are ready for them. Each character is introduced with its possible pronunciations and meaning, just like most other Kanji dictionaries.

The two things that make this book unique are the detailed "etymological" explanations of the formation of each character, and the suggested mnemonic devices for each glyph. The mnemonics are not always useful, and often you can come up with better ones yourself, but the explanation of the formations of the characters is outstanding. By understanding how the character was formed, you learn the various elements that make up all kanji, making them easier to learn as you go along. An additional benefit is that by knowing the origins of the character, you won't be thrown off when you happen upon kanji written using the old style, which depending on where you live and what you do, may be fairly often.


The only thing that I found disappointing about this book is that is doesn't give stroke-by-stroke instructions on writing most kanji. Granted, that would make the book a MUCH larger volume, but when faced with a 23-stroke monster, some idea of where to start writing it would be helpful. Of course, if you use a word-processor exclusively, you'll never need to know.

Anyone attempting to learn the Japanese language quickly realizes that Kanji is the most difficult of the three Japanese alphabets to learn. Each kanji can have anywhere from 1 to 42(or so) strokes involved in writing it, and plain memorization is a Herculean task. Kenneth Henshall, however, has provided the divertable rivers with this book. Each of the 2000 standard Kanji that the Japanese have learned by the time they've finished school is indexed by the year it's learned, and each listing has the KUN and 'on' readings listed--just as in a Kanji Dictionary.. ..the difference is, Kenneth has researched each Kanji's origin as a picture or diagrammed idea, and explained the reason for the changes from that form under each Kanji. He has also included Mnemonic devices after each explanation of the origin of the Kanji, to help you remember what the Kanji is drawn like, why, and what each means.. I have found this book immensely helpful. As a straightforward Kanji Dictionary, it's only so-so, because it's not organized by stroke order or some similar method.. --but, knowing the reason for each line in a Kanji helps me to draw them correctly when I need to, interpret them correctly when I see them, and not accidentally add an extra piece to a Kanji that doesn't belong there. The Mnemonic devices weren't as helpful, to me--but they may help some.. --all in all, I found this book necessary in order to have any chance at all at remembering Kanji, and despite it's less than optimum potential as a Kanji Dictionary, it works well enough that I don't have to buying one until I can afford it. Kanji are facinating, and I've caught myself reading this book when I should be studying.

I think your benefit from this book will very much depend on what you're trying to do and the type of memory you have.

About 3 years ago I bought this but soon after it began to gather dust - I preferred "Kanji Pict-o-Graphix" as I was impressed with my ability to `learn' 20 kanji a day from just remembering the images. As I was learning Japanese as a hobby, this was fun and very useful for the basic vocab at night school, but last year I moved to Japan and needed to rapidly learn as many kanji as possible.

I then realised the worth of this book. As I approached the `useful' minimum of 250 kanji I immediately realised that you can't simply remember any more by rote learning (unless you have 16 years like Japanese children!) and that the only way to fix them in your mind is to actually _understand_ the meaning. This book emphasises the usefulness of the individual kanji components (radicals) and also gives a guide to the broader `sense' - invaluable when an identical kanji is used in very different words.

The only criticism of this book is that it's presentation style at first appears too academic, but if you're seriously attempting to be able to write all 2000 kanji then I've found this one most useful. The various `simple methods' of learning kanji in my 5 other books simply didn't work for me and they are now long forgotten.

Don't worry about the lack of stroke-order, use a book like "The Basic Kanji Book" by Bonjinsha to learn the order of the first 50 and it becomes natural after that (it's about the only thing that has fairly well-kept rules in kanji). There is no English->Kanji section - but this would just perpetuate the myth that Japanese can be translated word-to-word from Latin languages. I just used a dictionary, then looked up the kanji in the book's Japanese index (thankfully in roman text). If you get tired of this, then some of the free computer-dictionaries (e.g. JWPce) have cross-references to the order in this book.

As has already been stated, this book is NOT a Kanji dictionary or a Kanji textbook. If that's what you are looking for, look elsewhere. However, "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters" is excellent as a study tool for actually learning the Joyo Kanji 1 by 1. Considering the fact that each Kanji is supplied with details of its origin, on top of the most common readings and some examples of usage, this book will give the user a greater understanding of Kanji than almost any other Kanji aid out there. Moreover, the Kanji are grouped according to their grade in Japan which makes it useful for studying systematically and especially for those will take the Japanese proficiency test because you know exactly which kanji will be required. Some people gripe about the fact that the stroke order is not given for each Kanji, but this is quite a trivial complaint because I remembering learning the rules of stroke order in about 15 minutes when I first started learning Japanese. Of course, these basic rules for stroke order are given in the introduction of this book. If you are looking for a book to help you learn the Joyo Kanji, please check this book out. Not only is it good as a study tool, but it's ten times more interesting than books that simply lay the Kanji out with no aid to memorization. One person wrote somewhere that foreigners should learn Kanji in the same manner as Japanese children do, a task which essentially takes them 9 years of schooling to complete. My answer to that person is, are you out of your mind??? Not only do most people not have the time or willpower, but Japanese children can already speak most of the words that the Kanji describe so that they have a huge advantage. Everyone needs to find the best method for themselves, but it will be difficult no matter what..(unless you have photographic memory!)

I think this book will be very helpful to anyone studying Kanji whose first language is English & still has trouble reading hiragana. Anyone who has mastered Japanese beyond level 3 of the proficiency test will probably find the lack of Kana readings and the over-dependence on Roman letters a bit irritating. As it is, most students who learn more than 300 kanji already know kana as well as their own alphabet.
That said, the book is extremely helpful in helping students to analyze the compenent parts of the Jouyou Kanji. Henshall's method is to first present the history of the Kanji & how it came to acquire various meanings in Chinese and Japanese. It may seem to be too much information at first, but the value in this method is apparent when Henshall establishes the PHONETIC component for the Kanji. Since most Kanji follow the Rebus principle--i.e. visual puns based on phonetic values--pointing out the phonetic element will bring the Japanese student a better understanding of how the Kanji is actually meant to be used. Knowing the phonetic makes it a lot easier to remember & use in reading or writing. If students using the book disregard most of Henshall's mnemonic devices by focusing purely on the phonetic element in the Kanji ONLY, the book will be extremely helpful, since the phonetic element in the kanji was used as a pronunciation & memory guide from the very beginning anyway.
In the end, I would have given the book 4 stars, except for the lack of Kana readings (as mentioned above) & the very poor calligraphy. Both of these problems could be solved with a new edition. Until that time, it gets 3 stars.

Reviewers have critized this book for not being a Kanji dictionary (it's not) or for not providing needed stroke order. (The excellent Tuttle Guides to Writing Kanji provide workbook pages so that you can learn stroke order by guided practice.) If there could be a book that would provide all that you need to learn Japanese, it would come with a forklift. I find Henshall's guide to be tremendously valuable in providing just enough insight into where each character came from to make it stick in the mind. If we were to learn the basic Kanji the way Japanese school children do (as has been suggested) we should be prepared to spend 9 years. A Guide to Remembering has a place in the library of any student of Japanese.

This book gives a paragraph-sized summary of the origins of each of the 1945 basic kanji (selected by the Japanese Ministry of Education for general use and taught in grades 1-6). Where the etymology is not helpful, Henshall invents (or recounts) some mnemonic tricks.

The etymology I find fascinating and helpful, but that's the kind of thing that varies a lot between individuals.

Where the etymology is misleading, the mnemonics Henshall invents (or recounts) sometimes work for me, sometimes not. But it's a tough job, and I think batting .500 here (for any one individual reader) is an excellent performance.

Taking a step back, Henshall's book offers an interesting mix of visual and verbal clues, and it won't always work for anyone. But if you're academically minded (or a history buff, or an avid reader), you'll probably get a lot of use out of this.

The Tuttle flash cards would probably be a good complement to this book.

This book is comprised of the entire jouyou kanji set (1,945 basic characters for every day use). This is a great book for any student of Japanese because it indexes the kanji by grade level, has handwritten versions of the kanji, sample compounds, etymology of the characters, and provides a useful mnemonic for memorization. The only drawbacks are that the book does not list the stroke order or the main radical for a given character. I feel that this book is useful for any level of study in Japanese.

I believe you would be happy with this book, if you knew what to expect from it. I'd actually call it a guide to remembering the *meanings* of Japanese characters, and - I agree with the mainstream reviewers - this book does a pretty good job at it!

Beside their *meanings*, though, I'm not sure what you could 'easily' remember.
In order to remember how to *write* a kanji, I need to write it several times, and the stroke order is not indicated - only 2 pages about the general principles...
As for remembering their *readings*, I find it much easier when kanji were intelligently incorporated throughout a complete Japanese course (a book such as "Genki Japanese" should be my next purchase). Sorry for stating the obvious, but if you want to learn how to *speak* Japanese, then you must learn how to pronounce the kanji, for knowing how they translate to your native language is certainly not enough!

Don't get me wrong though, I'm quite happy with this book. It's very fun to get to know these kanji through the texts (4-7 lines) explaining their origins and meanings, and the mnemonics can be efficient (I often find the explanation more efficient though). Also, I like how they are ordered by grades: The 76 first grade characters, The 145 second grade chracters etc...
Of course, you also get their readings, English translations, number of strokes, and 3 coumpounds (no kana, unfortunately). At the end, there are an appendix of elements, a kana appendix (with their source characters), an index of 'non general use' and 'chinese only' characters (the reviewer who said this book mixes Chinese and Japanese up might have missed that one), a stroke count index, and a readings index (in romaji, hum).
All in all, I believe you'll get quality when buying this book, and as for quantity, it's quite cheap for 675 pages, isn't it? I've rated it 4 stars - stroke order and kana would've been a must.