A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters 2nd Edition

by Kenneth G. Henshall (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0804820387

ISBN-10: 0804820384

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The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji: (JLPT All Levels) Remembering and Understanding the 2,136 Standard Characters
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A one-of-a-kind kanji study guide that introduces joyo kanji along with detailed, authentic notes about the historical development of each. As useful as it is fascinating, it's a book any new or aspiring scholar of Japanese will visit over and over.

In clear, large-sized entires, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters details each of the General Use Characters In clear, large-sized entires, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters details each of the General Use Characters—the 1,945 characters prescribed by the Japanese Ministry of Education for everyday use. Both Japanese readings and English meanings are given, along with stroke-count and stroke-order, examples of usage, and suggestions for memorizing. The components of each character are detailed. The kanji are graded according to Ministry of Education guidelines, allowing the student to prioritize them and track progress.

Comprehensive and clear, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters makes Japanese writing accessible to everyone.

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Editorial Reviews

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"This book is nothing less than an etymological kanji dictionary of all 2000+ joyo (everyday use) kanji! FOr each kanji character, it presents its history in brief, references it to associated characters, tells its story of how it has evolved into its current form, and also its readings (both kun and on readings) and three example words/compound words written using the character. Of all the Japanese learning–related books I own, this one is by far the one I've gotten the most out of. I heartily recommend this one! —Squidoo.com

"…I use it every single day, and have done for almost a year now. It is the most brilliant reference book ever for learning kanji. I use this in conjunction with a phone app for Android, Obenkyo. I use the app to learn how to write each kanji, and to study them. I consult this book daily to learn the Why of each kanji, and to figure out how to remember them. There is a story to each kanji--and when you know the story it is much easier to remember each kanji. To find a kanji, you look it up by the readings in the back. If you get one book to learn kanji, this is the one you should get." —Goodreads

From the Inside Flap

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tuttle Publishing; 2nd edition (January 15, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 704 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0804820384
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0804820387
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.95 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,034,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #148 in Japanese Language Instruction (Books)
- #905 in Alphabet Reference
- #2,748 in Foreign Language Instruction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
96 ratings

About the author

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Kenneth G. Henshall

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Kenneth G. Henshall is a graduate of the universities of London (B.A.), Sydney (PhD), and Adelaide (Dip. Ed.), and is now a professor of Japanese at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He has also taught at the universities of Auckland, Western Australia, California and Waikato. He is well-known for his translations of literature and history books, and is the author of A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters.

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Laif

A sober, scholarly, and cautious etymology of nearly 2000 characters. Too cursory.

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2014

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I'm just starting to learn my Kanji, and I received a very powerful boost forward when it comes to the first few hundred, having bought ShaoLan's "Chineasy" , and Walsh's "Read Japanese Today" . I was amazed at how quickly I gained a testable recognition of the core meaning of hundreds of characters within a few days using these two methods. Chineasy uses a purely graphic design-oriented method, where you learn the elements of the characters and study similarities between them. Len Walsh in "Read Japanese Today" takes a whimsical approach where he presents a little paragraph which describes the evolution of the character over time.

I was eager to find something similar to one of the two above methods for the rest of the 2000 or so commonly used Kanji characters, and this book by Henshall is the best I could find. Henshall lays out his perspective and approach very clearly in the introduction to the book. He takes a very cautious, sober and scholarly approach to the task of exploring the etymology of each character. This has its advantages and disadvantages. Even though the title is "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters," in reality Henshall's main goal seems to have been to create a reference book. Because of this sober and cautious approach, I don't feel that the author has quite the right disposition to be doling out mnemonics. He just doesn't seem to have a playful enough spirit for that task. The very short ones he offers for each character seem like half-hearted attempts.

The body of the text under each character consists largely of what he admits are "semi-notes." It's kind of a rambling collection of loose ideas regarding his appraisal of the history of each character. It seems to me that he is trying to be very cautious, and he sticks closely to the task of describing the longitudinal evolution of the character throughout history. He is openly dismissive of a lot of popular folk-ideas about how the letters evolved, and he seems to largely neglect the lateral system of interlinking connotations where a new learner of the language can compare and see how the same element (or radical) is used in several different characters to effect different types of meanings.

I can tell that learning with this book is going to be a much more laborious process than it was with Walsh's and ShaoLan's books. The notes that he has written about each character are helpful, but never enough in and of themselves for me to be satisfied that I have a handle on remembering them. I also feel the need to look up each character myself at chineseetymology.org and see the various forerunner designs of each pictograph. After a quick glance through those images, I often find that I sort of disagree with Henshall's conclusions.

My general sense is that developing this kind of reference book is too much for one person, and that's why the work on describing each character has ended up being somewhat incomplete. I'd love to see a more thorough job done in wiki form on the web by lots of volunteer participants.

Despite my criticisms, this seems as if it may indeed be the best English language Kanji reference book for all the commonly used characters that is available today, and I'm very grateful that I bought it. I appreciate all the work that Henshall put into it.

I like the fact that the first 996 characters are neatly organized into sections which match what Japanese children learn in their first through fifth years of school.

You can preview this book before you buy it by heading over to books.google.com - or you can check whether your local library has a copy.

BTW, because this a reference book, it's nicer to have a hard cover edition which will lay open by itself at any page. After buying the paperback, I decided to bind the book myself, using matboard, strong fabric, and contact cement.

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T. Fisher

Good for visual learners and the historically minded

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2009

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This is a terrific Kanji guide, and is a book that I truly love. I would recommend it very highly for anyone who learns best through visual associations. It is also great for anyone who tends toward being a "word nerd", interested in things like etymology and the historical development of language. If both of these traits apply to you -- as they do to me -- you will be in heaven with this book.

The basic modus operandi of the text is to take each of Japan's "general use" Kanji and give a brief historical-etymological essay on the character. This includes what the character looked like in its earliest forms and sometimes some intermediate forms before the modern Kanji was set. The early pictograms are great for developing visual associations that may not be obvious anymore in the modern Kanji. Plus, the historical essays make the book a language lover's paradise.

A part of the book I found less useful was the provision of a mnemonic phrase to help remember each of the Kanji. This may be of benefit if you are good at memorizing mnemonics, but I got much more out of the historical explanations and their assistance in developing visual cues.

Other reviewers have noted that the book is outdated in that it doesn't reflect the latest from the Japanese educational authorities. This may be true, but as an adult foreigner that frankly doesn't have much relevance for me. It could be important for others.

The improvement I would love to see is to have entries be one-half page for each character instead of one-third page, thus providing more space for historical usage and character forms.

One person found this helpful

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Sam

An Excellent Reference

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2007

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The book contains brief entries that excellently explain the etymology of each of the joyo kanji. Each entry also contains pronunciations, examples, stroke count, suggestions for memorization, and a brief mnemonic. The mnemonics are (as in most textbooks) of inconsistent quality (some are just _weird_), but some are quite good, and the suggestions for memorization are useful. The book is well-indexed (the index of characters by reading is extremely helpful) and well cross-referenced (very useful when encountering new components in a complex kanji).

The only major strike against this book is its somewhat misleading title; it really should be called "A Guide to the Origins of Japanese Characters" or something similar. While some people (including myself) will find the etymological information alone to be a major help in learning and memorizing characters, some will find it far less helpful for that purpose.

Minor strikes against this book include the lack of kana readings (the author also somewhat confusingly transliterates "ou" and "oo" in the same way, as another reviewer pointed out) and the lack of stroke order (leaving that out was probably a good decision overall, though, since adding that would make the book quite a bit bigger and it's quite sizable as it is). It's worth noting that this is neither textbook nor kanji dictionary, nor is it a substitute for either. Still, I think this book is an excellent reference for any serious student of Japanese writing, preferably as a supplement to a good kanji textbook and dictionary.

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French legal translator

Interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 3, 2018

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Very interesting book - although the first edition calligraphy is not good.

j price

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2014

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Arrived on time and as eescribed

Amazon Customer

Henshall fan

Reviewed in Canada on March 27, 2013

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Even though I make more use of the Heisig volume and even though I reverted to the French "500 Kanji" 'tango' book to get rolling, this remains my fave.

It has downsides ... a lack of Katakana for the ON-readings .... but a decent set of indices at the back.

What I do is cross-reference entries with pencil marginalia/annotations and I pencil in the Unicode value from my flashcard app or from Denshi Jisho web page.

I still prefer my mnemonics ... but while Heisig has more entries and arguably a better organization Henshall has good etymology info.

What Henshall does well is organiize each school year of kanji by ON-reading.

TIP -- i pencil smudge/mark the ends of the book to show each ODD block of 100 entries and then mark each 50 with a bar in another colour ... the RESULT : I often land on the page of the kanji - by ENTRY number ( Henshalll number) not page number !

At worst the end pages "indexing" lnds me within two pags of my target.

I also mark by school year "step-wise" on th end pages. It takes only a few minutes. N harm is done to a book that you should wear out with use !

Cross-referencing as an activity seems almost as effective as mnemonics. I see a kanji in Henshall. "Don't I know another kanji with ..."

I use "single-barb' arrows forward and back with ENTRY numbers as well as CP and CF with entryy numbers for Compare and Confer.

Some kanji I give a list of Henshalll numbers for cognates.

You should find that th cross-references start to reach past that 900 mark, then 1200 and finally to that 1,945th !

The end page wear also shows your "progress" as you cannot make good use of this book without wear ... so do not buy used unless CLEAN of marks.

And whatever you do, after 6 months of use, DON'T LOSE your COPY !

Ditto for the longer Heisig, if that is more to your taste ( I find many of his mnemonics sophomoric or worse.)

As you likely know, a mnemonics book is no substitute for a KANA-order Furigana dictionary and a KANA-order kanji dictionary. This book is a learning tool, not just reference. But the ON-reading order n Henshall is in KANA-order (not Latin alphaber order) t least within each grade level.

Heisig is ordered by his version of the Bushu radicals. With time, I find I use it more now ... it is just often not to my taste as a source of mnemonics.

My opinion: if you find a mnemonic too dumb, you may not want to saddle your memory with it. Kanji are gorgeous and deserve mnemonics worth rememberng. What Henshall etymologies do is let me judge when my own mnemn9c may be too misleading abut the nature of the character ( e.g. his hints about features that hint at the pronunciation. )

One person found this helpful

MetalWarrior

Tolle Sache

Reviewed in Germany on January 5, 2015

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Beim Lernen der Kanji fällt mir das Einprägen leichter, wenn ich die Hintergrundgeschichte (Ethymologie) dazu lese.
Lesarten, Herkunft, Beispielverwendungen finde ich sehr schön beschrieben.
Ist die Herkunft nicht eindeutig bekannt, wird dies erwähnt.

Die Abbildungen der Kanji selbst ist detailliert und groß genug für meine Augen.
Das Einzige was mir fehlt ist die Strichfolge.

Ein Merksatz zu jedem Kanji wird erwähnt, als Eselsbrücke, um sich das Zeichen besser zu merken - steht aber nicht immer in Zusammenhang mit der Wortherkunft.

One person found this helpful

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Noëlle.P

L'avis d'une francophone

Reviewed in France on August 1, 2013

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Je parle couramment l'anglais et suis habituée aux ouvrages (grammaires, dictionnaires anglo-japonais...) dans cette langue. Je pensais que ça ne poserait pas plus de problème ici. Néanmoins, les aides mnémotechniques s'avèrent inopérantes car les recoupements de sens utilisés ne sont pas transposables en français. Evidemment, me direz-vous... mais je n'y avais pas pensé...
D'autre part, les références à l'historique en chinois ancien, qui tient la majeure partie de chaque article, est également beaucoup trop pointu pour moi. C'est culturellement très intéressant mais ne relève pas, à mon niveau, de l'ouvrage "usuel". Ca ne m'aide aucunement à retenir les kanjis modernes.
A réserver aux anglophones et/ou aux érudits sinologues.
Tout ceci n'enlève rien à la qualité du produit, mais il ne correspond pas à mes besoins.

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