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P. G. O'Neill

Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference Paperback – November 1, 1987

by P. G. O'Neill (Author)

287 ratings

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Essential Kanji is an integrated course for learning to read and write the 2,000 basic Japanese characters. It introduces the kanji that are now in everyday use, a mastery of which makes it possible to read most modern Japanese. Devised for either home or classroom use, the book has been tested and refined by years of use in university classes taught by the author.

Print length

328 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Weatherhill
Publication date

November 1, 1987
Dimensions

4.7 x 0.93 x 7.11 inches
ISBN-10

0834802228
ISBN-13

978-0834802223
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

P. G. O'Neill, a native Londoner, is Professor of Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 1957 with a thesis on traditional Japanese drama. His publications include Japanese Names, A Guide to No, Early No Drama, An Introduction to Written Japanese (with S. Yanada), and A Programmed Introduction to Literary-Style Japanese.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Weatherhill; Reissue edition (November 1, 1987)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 328 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0834802228
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0834802223
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.7 x 0.93 x 7.11 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #651,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #294 in Handwriting Reference (Books)
- #482 in Mythology & Folklore Encyclopedias
- #1,018 in Reading Skills Reference (Books)

Customer Reviews:
287 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		74%
4 star		17%
3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Alexa V.

LOVE this book!!

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2016

Verified Purchase

I love this book so much!!! It's got a very nice set up, and is a little hard to understand at first, but if you just take a moment to read the beginning instead of jumping right to the kanji, everything will be great! The book shows stroke patterns, as well as what it looks like written, and what it used to look like. It gives most, if not all the readings and translations, as well as example sentences for each character. The back of the book gives you some kanji radicals, and a place where you can easily find unknown kanji by the number of strokes it has. I carry this book around everywhere everyday, and I use it all the time! It's easy to understand, and is arranged very well! So far in one month I've learned about 40 kanji, that I can almost always recognize and read. I just love this book so much, it was DEFINITELY worth the buy!!

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bernardo A. Mendonca

Good Book

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2009

Verified Purchase

Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference

The title of the book sums it all up. People have said but i'll repeat. This is by no means a complete book that you can buy and learn just from it. It really shines as a REFERENCE book and it is OK as learning book.

This is the book that you want to have with you all time, because it's small and have all the basic kanji, just bring this to you class or something, it's way more pratical than any kanji dictionary. It's NOT something you can bring in your pocket, but is small enough to place in you backpack or you can just carry arround in your hand.

As a learning tool i find this book to be ok, the kanjis are arranged in such a way that all the compounds are made using previous kanjis with is very nice for memorization. You don't have a lot of info for each kanji so it can confuse you some times, it would be better to give you a sentence instead of a compound, but that wold make the book a litte bigger.

I have two main complaints with this book. First: romaji. If you are a japanese student (not even a serious one, just a japanese student) you need to know AT LEAST the kana and katakana, so romaji is a BIG no. Second: material quality. The book is not made with cheap material, but it could be nicer. The paper could be dictionary quality like, that would make the book even thinner, i find the paper in this book to be to thick (it could just be me).

I recommend this book only if you are also geting a kanji dictionary, this is suposed to be a tool of integration and reference, you should have that in mind. Overall a good book.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Very useful

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2007

Verified Purchase

I am learning Japanese using the "Japanese in Mangaland" series. I have found this book to be very useful when working through the program. The Kanji are ordered in a progressive order of difficulty, also it builds on what you have already learned, so the process is easier than expected.
The kanji are depicted with brush calligraphy and also written with a ballpen. Old versions of the kanji, in use prior to 1947 are also given. The on yomi and kun yomi readings are provided as well as the modern Mandarin reading. Of course several English meanings are given and examples of its use in phrases.
Two important appendixes are the listing by number of strokes and a reading to kanji list. If you know the reading, the reading to kanji list is very easy to use. The number of strokes kanji listing is useful, but the kanji are very small, and those of us with any degree of presbyopia may need a magnifying glass for the more complicated kanji.
I highly recommend it, and think it should prove very helpful for any level student.

4 people found this helpful

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James

Great book for the study of Chinese characters

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2021

Verified Purchase

Even though this book is for Japanese Kanji, it works as an excellent source for studying Chinese.

Helpful

Oliver

Concise and Extremely Useful

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2007

Verified Purchase

This little book contains 2,000 kanji characters, roughly the same characters that the Japanese government considers necessary for literacy. The characters are presented in a very well thought-out order. The simple characters, which are often the building blocks for more complicated characters, are shown first. There are also a couple of useful indexes which allow you to find any particular character by stroke count and by reading.

The book gives what I presume are the actual original derivations of the characters, in other words, how each character came to be. I found these both interesting and helpful in memorizing the meanings. One minor draw-back: there are usually only two compounds shown for each character. My kanji flash cards, for example, have four each.

The book is compact, I find that I carry this book around with me quite a bit, so that I can read it whenever I have a few spare minutes.

Keep in mind, this book is only kanji characters. You cannot begin to learn the Japanese language by reading just this one book.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

アンソニー

Worth it.

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2015

Verified Purchase

Seems to be pretty helpful, getting good use of it so far. My only gripe is that the legend/making the most use out of the kanji isn't so clear. For example I feel they could've done a better job at separating on/kunyomi readings and explaining them. That's no reason to not get this book though, it's compact which is great to take around and it's straight forward. Really neat and handy book to have.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ana Lucía de Hoyos

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

Excellent for anyone learning Japanese

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great!

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Colin

Essential!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

I bought this book for the first time when I was 19 yrs old, an art student, obsessed by everything Edo period Japanese and at the time of two Great Japan exhibitions in London. Roll on to 58yrs old and with a much softened obsession I realised I’d given away my copy years ago. I had to get another for research and what was once easy to buy had suddenly become hard to find. This book really is essential for classic, formal brush drawn Kanji and indispensable if that’s what you need to research.

Allan

Good reference book for a student

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

It's a very handy reference book. Don't mistake it for a standard dictionary though. I use the more of a means to ensure I'm using the correct reading of a kanji then I'll go online to read more in-depth if necessary. It can seem really confusing if you're still very early in Japanese studies, I bought it about 3 weeks after I began and thought I'd wasted my money. However after about 6-7 weeks I pick this book up everyday now I'm (very slowly) replacing Hiragana readings with kanji.

I would like if it had modern word processor prints exemplified larger than just in the example readings.

One person found this helpful

Meg

Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

I really like this book everything is in logical order and it makes sense, plus there are loads of kanji and meanings for each one, I would only suggest this for serious learners though as some of the explanations can be a bit confusing at first and it doesn't have any workbook type of things inside ; it's more of a do it yourself book as it just gives you the information. You definitely need to read the first few pages to understand what the rest of the book means but overall I think this is really good for learning kanji.

2 people found this helpful

Fahim

Outdated and practically useless

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 25, 2019

Verified Purchase

Really useless in the modern age, the text of the Kanji is prsented in a hand written font which is useless in this day and age where you will be mainly looking/interacting with kanji printed or presented in a digital font format, makes learning and recognition more difficult, the book is practically useless if your trying to learn Japanese

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Weird book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2019

Verified Purchase

Roumaji alongside 2000 kanji.

Who exactly is learning kanji before kana...

3 people found this helpful

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