Remembering the Kanji, Volume 1: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters [Paperback]

James W. Heisig (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 484 pages
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press; 6 edition (March 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824835921
• ISBN-13: 978-0824835927
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James W. Heisig is professor and permanent research fellow at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent place to start November 11, 2011

By Me

Format:Paperback

Remembering the Kanji is not a grammar book, it will not teach you how to actually read the kanji, nor will it teach you more than one meaning (called a "keyword" in the book). Despite that, what this book does teach you is incredibly invaluable. Remembering the Kanji breaks down 2000 or so of the most common kanji and teaches you how to remember them and write them. You won't need to write kanji over and over again in order to learn them. Not only that, but even after finishing the book the method used in it remains useful whenever you encounter new kanji.

I consider reading this book one of the best choices I've made in learning Japanese, and I think it is the best way to start learning kanji, or reinforce them if you already know some. Also, I highly recommend that if you buy this book you take a look at a website called "reviewing the kanji" an unofficial, though recognized by the author, companion website that provides invaluable help and support when going through the book.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This is ABSOLUTELY the best way to LEARN kanji September 19, 2011

By Patrick Smith

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is THE way to learn kanji. Forget trying to learn like the Japanese learn. They learn by brute force over a period of roughly a decade and a half. With this method, you will learn to write the kanji and understand their basic meaning - and learn it within a month or two. After that, learning the readings gets significantly easier.

Not only that, but Japanese starts to make sense once you can leverage Kanji. That "word" that seems to mean 20 different things suddenly becomes 20 different words. After even just halfway through this book, I started correcting Japanese friends when they used the wrong Kanji, or used kana because the kanji had slipped their mind.

Start here... then move on to a textbook that (1) has NO romaji (2) uses kanji with furigana.

Best of luck to you!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This Is Where You Start. May 26, 2012

By Adversity

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have purchased this book a few months ago at the insistance of my brother to learn Japanese with him. The japanese culture has always fascinated me and I have always wanted to learn the language. However, a huge mass of people I know in person and through the internet have labeled japanese as a hard language to grasp, especially the kanji. If you are having trouble learning the language or you want to know where to start, then start with this book.

It had only taken me 11 chapters to notice that this was the best way to learn kanji and start the japanese language. This book when used in junction with the website and the flash card system, makes learning kanji not only easy... but fun. Its a simple idea where you use your imagination and combine kanji to make new kanji. There are about 2200 kanji in the book, but if you dedicate your time to it, it won't even take 3 months to learn the kanji and 6 months to have them fully memorized to recall.

When I say its easy, understand that it will take a little effort. You will have to study a bit and dedicate a lot of time to it. You are learning the meanings of the kanji and how to write them. You do not have to worry about gramnar or pronunciation yet. If you are wondering 'Why Buy This?', the answer is simple. It gets you over the huge and widely believed hugest hurdle of the japanese language. Start here and whevever you go from there is up to your own judgement. It is not an extremely easy process. It is however, not stressful or tedious at all. This is a 5 star product that everyone wishing to learn japanese should own. Whether for beginners or just for refrence, it is s must have in my opionion.

-Adversity

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Didn't work that well for me August 31, 2012

By Iza Smarty

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

It took me 7 months to finish this book. It was not enjoyable, but did give me an idea of how to view the kanji by components. I practiced for at least two hours a day, including writing practice at Skritter. A month later, I have forgotten many of the kanji I learned.

I have moved on to sentences and pronunciations. (Not RTK 2 or 3 - You couldn't pay me to spend another minute with Heisig!) I sort of wish I had learned the kanji in frequency order and then maybe I'd be doing better with reading.

I found the RTK app helpful, even though they haven't bothered to update it for the 6th edition. Also, the Reviewing the Kanji site is great for finding stories. RevTK has the most beginner-friendly Japanese language learning forum I have found on the web. Lots of helpful info there!

I know that thousands of folks have found RTK invaluable. To me, Heisig seems like kind of a strange guy and I did not enjoy his writing style. He'd keep saying in the book that the hardest part was past and THEN later on intro a chapter saying it was the hardest in the book. What's up with that? Some chapters have less than 20 kanji and the longest chapter had well over 100. It was difficult to break up into manageable bits.

To be honest, I now feel that I may have wasted my time on a method that didn't work for me.

UPDATE: They finally released an update to the iOS app that brings it up to date with the 6th. Edition. I sure wish they had done this A LOT sooner.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great system, but depends on what you want to learn November 24, 2012

By Sitting in Seattle TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

[I'm reposting this review from the previous version, as it keeps being republished for good reason. The review still applies.]

I've been using Heisig's book for about 7 weeks, and have "learned" 310 kanji during that time. I wanted to share some of my experiences and thoughts to add to the other thoughtful reviews.

First, by way of background, I experienced the "traditional" method of learning kanji when I studied Chinese a number of years ago. As Heisig notes in his introduction, that method involves learning characters in order according to how fundamental they are in language, and one learns the written character, pronunciation, grammatical details, and so forth simultaneously. The characters are learned purely by rote, and the pictorial aspects are not tied to anything systematic. My experience agreed with Heisig's notes: with nothing to anchor one's memory, it is nearly impossible to remember how to write the characters. I spent many hours a day practicing the characters to little avail and much frustration, and ultimately abandoned learning Chinese because I could not find the time to persist in that method.

When I decided to learn Japanese, the fear of chinese characters returned. How could I learn kanji when Chinese characters were an insurmountable obstacle in the past? Luckily, Heisig's book has been part of the answer. The key is that, instead of merely learning random markings, he lays out a system in which one uses imaginative associations. And, yes, it really works (at least for me). It is not difficult to "learn" 20-30 kanji per day, given an available hour or two of time.

Now, a few things have to be said. First, in his system, to "learn" a kanji means simply to learn two things: (1) how to write it; (2) a single key meaning.... There are many other things that one does not learn (in volume 1 of his system): (3) pronunciation (that's in volume 2); (4) alternative meanings, which are multiple for most kanji; (5) compounds with other kanji; (6) anything about usage or grammar. That is by design, as Heisig notes that learning to write the kanji is the most important barrier for westerners. He specifically designed the system to lower that hurdle as low as it can be, and that meant that the other aspects of kanji are postponed.

The value of this system depends on one's goals, schedule, and related activity. First, Heisig notes that his system should be completely separated from any other simultaneous activity to learn kanji. It is NOT intended to be a supplement to a second or third year Japanese course, for instance. Further, it is not designed to progress from common to less-common, like many kanji books. Rather, it bunches kanji together solely on the basis of how easy they are to learn together. This implies that the course must be completed -- or very nearly completed -- to get most of the benefit. That implies a certain schedule, namely, to persist until one is done.

In terms of goals, the system works well for some goals: (a) learning to write the basic kanji in a short amount of time, so one can devote study to grammar and other matters; (b) rapidly developing an extremely rudimentary reading ability, where "reading" means "occasionally figuring out a few words, but mostly just being able to have some visual memory for kanji when confronted by them"; (c) laying a foundation for other study of Japanese when one has an enforced break of at least a few months; (d) learning the kanji because they're fun, as a supplement to kana-based Japanese classes (i.e., prior to starting kanji formally); (e) breaking the language down into parts that are more suitable for self-study. Those are my goals, and I suspect the goals of many other adult western learners of Japanese.

There are other goals that I believe are not well-suited to this system: (f) supplementing an intermediate or advanced Japanese language course where you're learning kanji otherwise (Heisig's book could, however, fill in a break in such instruction); (g) rapidly developing basic reading fluency, i.e., in relation to word frrequency or importance; (h) serving as a text for classroom; (i) reviewing or learning grammar.

One thing that I would highly recommend: get the flash cards in addition to this book. Yes, it is possible to make your own, but as other reviewers have noted, that is an unpleasant exercise. In addition, it is error-prone: if you don't know how to write the kanji well, the flash cards are likely to drill poor representations of the kanji. I would also note that Heisig's cards have other valuable information. First, they have cross-references to some common kanji dictionaries for westerners, so it is easy to look up a kanji in those when the key word meaning or stroke order is unclear. Second, they have pronunciation information to complement volume 2 of his system.

Finally, it should be obvious but I'll state it anyway: no book can do the hard work of learning a language for you. Heisig's system has given me what I needed to get over the very high hurdle of learning to write kanji, but it still takes a great deal of patience every day. You have to sit down and practice and review the flash cards, and his book, over and over. For me, it requires at least a few hours per week, in 30 minute pieces here and there -- but mostly it requires patience and diligence. Good luck! Read more ›