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James W. Heisig

Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 Hours Each Bilingual Edition

by James W. Heisig (Author)

166 ratings

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Following on the phenomenal success of Remembering the Kanji, the author has prepared a companion volume for learning the Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries of modern Japanese. In six short lessons of about twenty minutes, each of the two systems of "kana" writing are introduced in such a way that the absolute beginner can acquire fluency in writing in a fraction of the time normally devoted to the task.

Using the same basic self-taught method devised for learning the kanji, and in collaboration with Helmut Morsbach and Kazue Kurebayashi, the author breaks the shapes of the two syllabaries into their component parts and draws on what he calls "imaginative memory" to aid the student in reassembling them into images that fix the sound of each particular kana to its writing.

Now in its third edition, Remembering the Kana has helped tens of thousands of students of Japanese master the Hiragana and Katakana in a short amount of time . . . and have fun in the process.

ISBN-10

0824831640
ISBN-13

978-0824831646
Edition

Bilingual
Publisher

University of Hawaii Press
Publication date

April 30, 2007
Language

English
Dimensions

6.2 x 0.39 x 8.93 inches
Print length

160 pages
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About the Author

James W. Heisig, is emeritus professor and research fellow of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, located on the campus of Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. His books, translations, and edited collections,which have appeared in 12 languages,currently number 78 volumes.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Hawaii Press; Bilingual edition (April 30, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0824831640
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0824831646
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 0.39 x 8.93 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #383,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #66 in Japanese Language Instruction (Books)

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166 ratings

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James W. Heisig

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James W. Heisig, is emeritus professor and research fellow of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, located on the campus of Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. His books, translations, and edited collections,which have appeared in 13 languages,currently number 83 volumes.

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Customer reviews

5 star		70%
4 star		13%
3 star		3%
2 star		6%
1 star		9%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Father0fnine

Not formated for Kindle

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2020

Verified Purchase

I had this book in physical form, and I loved it. I still remember some of the kana I studied just because of this book.
I didn't, however, stick with the study for a variety of reasons that suggested getting a digital copy would work better for me. However, the kindle version is unreadable on my iPad. much of the book is put together as "images" that just show up as blank pages, lots and lots of blank pages, between each Kana. It makes finding and reading about each Kana difficult if not impossible. The kindle version is worth only 1 star. I added another star because I think the material would help with "Remembering the Kana" if only I could read it.

12 people found this helpful

Helpful

Chris

Overcomplicated Method of Learning Yet Good Source for Information

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

Going into this book, I already knew Kana. However, I read the book cover-to-cover and did all the lessons as instructed. My personal goal was to learn stroke order for hiragana and katakana, but I found myself amused at Heisig's attempt to reinvent the wheel on learning basic Kana.

To put it bluntly, Heisig WAY overcomplicates both hiragana and katakana. A good example is "ki." When I first learned hiragana, my thought was, "Oh, that looks like a key." However, Heisig tries to tell an elaborate story of a Samurai with a long sword on a key, which is on a rock to make a hairpin.

That is way too much for this simple character. There's no need to try to remember all of that nonsense over one simple character.

Ironically, you can probably learn Kana faster if you don't utilize this book, not only because of the overcomplicated stories, but also because Heisig teaches you everything out of order. Placing a heavy emphasis on sticking to the course, he makes you learn the easiest Kana first, but the problem is that all the characters are relatively easy, especially compared to Kanji. So, there's no real need to learn this material out of dictionary order. You're only making it worse on yourself because you'll have to relearn the proper way.

Kana is not hard. In my opinion, it is the easiest part of Japanese to learn. This book will undoubtedly make the process much more difficult.

All that said, I think this is a good resource for people who are wanting to learn stroke order and also as a method of testing yourself. And if you find yourself really struggling, maybe those overcomplicated stories might help you! Who knows?

But for me, I just don't think it's worth the price. If you can pick it up for cheap, go for it. Otherwise, just find your own way to learn Kana.

I would also like to add that just because this is a poor way to learn Kana, I think Heisig does a wonderful job of teaching Kanji. So, don't dismiss his Remembering the Kanji. Definitely pick those books up!

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Tries to force a kanji learning system on the kana. Bad idea.

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2016

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This book is an unwise attempt to apply an elaborate kanji memorization system to the study of kana, a task with an entirely different set of requirements. As the author notes, this book did not come out of experience with teaching kana, but from his desire to respond to a dare from someone who had used his kanji learning system. As such, it is not adapted to the real needs one encounters in learning kana, but instead to the goal of trying to adapt a pre-existing kanji learning system for kana. The result is refreshingly unorthodox and even ingenious in its approach, but the approach is poorly adapted for the purpose.

In a nutshell, the approach is far too elaborate and cumbersome for the task. The book creates a complex system of multi-part mnemonic stories by which you are supposed to associate the different parts of each kana to English keywords, and then associate these English keywords with the kana sound roughly approximated by the first sound of the English keyword (for example, you remember “ha” from the keyword “hopskotch”, “a” from “otter”, etc). For example the book says you should learn the kana あ by creating a mental image from this story: “The sound “A” calls to mind a playful little OTTER, swimming on his back in the middle of a pond whose banks are picketed on all sides by NO-PARKING signs. On his tummy are a stack of DAGGERS, which he is tossing one by one at the signs, clapping his paws with glee each time he hits a bull’s eye”. These stories are far too complicated for the relatively straightforward task of learning kana.

Or this one: “…imagine a BOOMERANG with one wing considerably longer than the other and a hole drilled in the middle. You stick the PUPPY DOG’S TAIL through this hole and tie a knot in it so that it doesn’t slip out. You throw the whole contraption into the sky, while a group of people standing around throw egg YOLKS at the hapless creature. You can ‘read’ the image like this to get the order of the strokes correct: pople tossing YOLKS at puppies flying overhead, their TAILS strung through long BOOMERANGS”. The point of going to the trouble of remembering this entire nonsensical story is to remember that the hiragana for “yo” is よ. For me, this is just way too complicated an approach for something so simple.

Also, for a book of this length and price, and whose sole task is to teach you the kana, this book has little or no information on key issues such as irregular sounds/readings, transcription katakana, keyboarding, or romaji transcription rules (you need to know romaji rules for typing and also because it is used in teaching Japanese grammar, such as “-u verb” conjugation). The book takes a pass on providing such information by saying it is “outside the scope of these pages”, despite the fact that the book is actually pretty long for something that only covers kana.

The book uses various subtle stratagems like this in an attempt to increase your satisfaction with it while excusing itself for not doing more. The book heads off criticisms by lowering your expectations, and disowns any troubles you might have by saying that they’re your fault. For example, it says “If you take a moment to reconsider hiragana you had trouble with, you will probably find a vague or badly formed image to be the source of the problem”. The book has an annoying pattern of placing very high expectations on you, but very low expectations on itself, while making itself sound super brilliant: “Someone dared me, so I went out and achieved the outlandish goal of allowing you to learn hiragana in 3 hours, and I did it in three days! How cool am I?” Those aren't the author's words, just how he came across to this reader.

There’s a clear dropoff from the Hiragana section, which received some real effort, to the Katakana section, which seemed to be done more sloppily.

Although the book advertises itself as teaching you to read hiragana in three hours, this is less than meets the eye. This book just gets you to the point where you can recognize most individual hiragana with some mental effort. To be able to read and write fluently, you need several weeks of practice with actual words.

On the plus side, I like the book’s idea of teaching the kana out of dictionary order. Since the kana can be learned relatively quickly, it’s not necessary to match up with the order taught in textbooks/Japanese classes. You can learn all the kana in one weekend, so you can just go in whatever order you like.

I also like how the hiragana vocabulary has no English (which would just be a distraction), and the way the book sets the dictionary order to Frere Jacques. Great solution to an important issue which many other books overlook!

Still, the book as a whole is the result of a bad idea, and results in much wasted effort.

16 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Kindle version is unreadable.

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

The media could not be loaded.

The kindle edition is impossible to read. There are links that lead to blank pages, and scrolling through the pages look blank too. Even after removing and re-downloading.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Justin Kern

Great teaching method, but e-book has broken links

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2014

Verified Purchase

This book is fantastic, but DO NOT buy the electronic version!! The book has lessons that take you around the kana alphabets out of order, but these buttons sometimes take you to the wrong letters. Sometimes the buttons don't work at all, and you need to manually search for a page. I "finished" the katakana without learning "chi" because the lesson skipped over it. So many incidents like this happened, it was a real headache figuring it all out. Buy the physical book instead and rebuke whoever converted it into e-format please!

7 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Lee Hayes

Kindle Shambles

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

I’ve bought the kindle version and can only say it’s utterly shambolic. I’ve tried it on my iPad, kindle paper white and iPhone and on all the links are all over the place and there are dozens of blank pages between 2 pages of text and Isco platelet unusable. Would get refund if I could. I assume printed version is fine but avoid the kindle one at all costs.

One person found this helpful

Luke Carroll

Very good but with some flaws

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2009

Verified Purchase

I'm currently reading one of the author's other books, Remembering the Kanji, and that book really is pretty much perfect. By contrast, this book has two major flaws despite otherwise being a great book; one, the author seems much more suited to creating interesting ways to remember kanji elements than he does to creating ways of remembering the kana. Two, many of the pronunciation guides are given based on American English pronunciation rather than British English.

For example, generally "ta" is generally pronounced similar to "TAp" or "TAtty" but in this book the author suggests using "TOp" as the pronunciation. Naturally, the author being American, all "a" sounds are given the sound of a British short "o" (as in "Orange") and all "o" sounds are given the sound of a rounded "o" (as in "Only"). There are other misleading US pronunciations given too. This leads to one saying words like "kun" - correctly pronounced so it rhymes with "pun" - in a very over-pronounced American way that rhymes with "loon".

In short, think of how Americans pronounce "Cecil" as "See-sill" and you'll see how you'll sound mispronouncing the Japanese syllabaries and consequently full words. You would normally only pronounce Japanese in such an over-pronounced way if you were shouting something, as you may shout to a friend on the other side of a road, or if you were singing.

As for the first given flaw, the author's slightly oddball method of teaching kanji meanings, attributing interesting connotations and keywords to the smaller elements and then building up from said smaller elements to the complex kanji, is employed roughly here to try and enable the reader to remember kana pronunciation and form. It's slightly flawed here for the main reason that he has to attribute some incredibly odd meanings to the elements which in my opinion make it harder to remember than merely copying out the kana a few times (a practice he's strongly against). For example, he suggests that one should remember a certain kana character by seeing it as a puppy with its tail stuck in a hole in a boomerang, hovering overhead as people below throw eggs at it. Furthermore the US pronunciation rears its head here because the element of the wacky image that's meant to aid with pronunciation is the "YOlk" of the egg - yes, you apparently say it as "yo"; however this is for the kana "ya".

Now this has all been very negative so far and yet I've awarded it 4/5. The reason being that it's a truly helpful book if you're willing to do the following: (a) find another source for pronunciation, there are many such sources on the internet and many "Learn Japanese" books and CDs compiled by British and Japanese authors and (b) are willing to sometimes ignore his bizarre stories and make your own. For example, he suggests the hiragana "ma" be remembered by the keyword "mama", with the image of a mother standing in an open field throwing large heavy swords so that they come back to her like boomerangs. All that despite the fact that "ma" looks just like a "MAst" on a boat; a much easier way of remembering it.

26 people found this helpful

Mairi Rivers

Excellent method. Highly recommended.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 8, 2017

Verified Purchase

Have found this book really excellent for learning the Kana. It is broken down into short lessons which really do take no more than 20 minutes. The only problem is that as it is based on American pronunciation there are a few words that don't work in UK English. So you either have to make up your own or try to remember to use an exaggerated American accent. I have done a mixture of both.
I would highly recommend this book. My 14 year old daughter has also learned the Kana with this book.

One person found this helpful

J.B

It worked for me!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2011

Verified Purchase

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of how the system works, and I'm not going to agree with the author when he says it can be done in 3 hours each, at least not flawlessly, BUT it certainly worked, and worked FAST!

I cracked open this book on the first of 3 night shifts, using some of my time to study it. I'm happy to say after some solid work over those 3 nights, (somewhere in the realm of 10 hours study time altogether) I can now not only write words spoken to me, but confidently read and understand words written entirely in Hiragana. I still don't know what they mean, but damn can I read and write 'em!

Looking forward to learning the Katakana!

One person found this helpful

bluxpretion

Love This Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

I love this book! I'd say I'm driven to learning Japanese, but this book makes it easier to jump right in; it's fun! Putting together imagery and stories to really get you Remembering the Kana! Not gonna lie, I was slightly skeptical at first…slllightly. I did my research about this book and read plenty of reviews carefully and I could not find a single hater or nay-sayer or anything like that - the reviews were only really positive, so that's what convinced me to give it a try! Let me tell you, this s*** works; you won't believe how well it works! Committing the effort, the discipline, the time and focus to this book, Remembering the Kana should be a breeze! James W. Heisig has already done all the research and most of the work for you!

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Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 Hours Each Bilingual Edition

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