Remembering the Kanji: Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters v. 1 (Manoa)

Probably just like you, I read the many positive testimonials of this book and fell in love with the concept: ...to apply the methodology that memory experts use to remember long sequences of items to learning English definitions of ~2K kanji within 3-6 months.

A few weeks and a few hundred kanji later, I'd settled happily into a 25 per day rhythm and was feeling so positive about the process that I felt like writing my own glowing testimonial and uploading it to Amazon. In fact, so strong was my enthusiasm for the process that when ever I read a negative review I was quite incensed.

Anyway, skip forward a few weeks and I decided to show off a little to my postgraduate, Japanese educated girlfriend about how well I'm doing with my kanji memorization. She called me stubborn, so I said emphatically `I know the kanji for stubborn!' with a conceited grin on my face. I traced out carefully and correctly the kanji I had learned from RTK and she immediately said `Where is the rest of it? Stubborn is a compound word made from more than one kanji'. `Oops' I thought, `the book hasn't mentioned anything like that'. A quick check of an online dictionary showing around thirty different English meanings for compound kanji Japanese words beginning with the kanji I'd memorized for stubborn had me wondering what it was I'd actually learned? Had I learned half a word? A non-contextual stub of stubborn!

The next doubts entered my mind when I discovered that for hours every day I was vigorously memorizing kanji that my girlfriend didn't even know. This seemed to have quite serious implications. Here I was, a few months into my very enthusiastic beginnings of learning the Japanese language with a view to working in Japan in the future, and I'm cramming obscure kanji into my head that someone who'd gone through the entire Japanese education system wasn't aware of? Did I really need to know whether a certain Japanese person's surname translates as Japanese Judas Tree or St. Paulownia Tree without even knowing the respective Japanese pronunciation so early into my studies into Japanese???

The final nails in the RTK coffin for me were hammered in after I did a few calculations about the amount of time I was spending on the process. I calculate that I can probably be at JLPT3 standard by the time I'd be finishing with RTK book 1. And a quick search on monster.com shows jobs in my field in Japan for that proficiency level.

As a member of Mensa I had no problem with the RTK method, I tried it and I don't see its value. My way forward is continuing evening classes, injecting as much kanji into the classes as I can with self study, watching subtitled movies, listening to audio lessons on my iPod, reading kids books with furigana next to the kanji, playing with Japanese input for MS Windows, checking out basic Japanese websites and conversing with Japanese speakers when ever possible.

Whilst learning ALL kanji in a short timescale is a hypnotizing prospect, I will not be learning kanji after it has been ripped out of the Japanese language as it has in RTK and incidentally, that is how Japanese language teachers feel about it too. You really have to be quite stub- to believe they're ALL mistaken.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a better method (0/0 people found this helpful)

I think the only people who don't find this book to be something of a god send either unfortunately don't get on with the mnemonic system, or completely missed the point and gave up (like some of the reviewers).

Stop to think for a second about what this book aims to achieve: being able to write accurately, from memory, 2045 characters, and the ability to very easily learn additional ones. Most people manage this is within 3-6 months, and with consistent SRS review, the results will last a lifetime.

Trying to cram readings on top of that with brute force memorisation completely contradicts the idea of the book. It's hard to believe the people who suggest this have even read the introduction. You will learn lots of readings from seeing characters that you recognise in your studies and reading, and after finishing the book you will recognise ALL the characters.

If you want to learn kanji, you owe it to yourself to at least try to see if this method works for you.

A must have for Students (1/1 people found this helpful)

What an amazing book!

I'm a student studying Japanese, and I must say, having had experience in otehr Kanji dictionaries, this is the best thing I have come across yet. Even though I've only had this book for about a week, but already i have memorized the meaning of 70 new Kanji. It breaks down the Kanji in to easily digestable pieces, opening your eyes to the logic behind the seemingly random glyphs.
A must have book for Students of Japanese.

It is a love or hate thing (30/31 people found this helpful)

If you are into self studying kanji, this is the book for you if you find the orthodox method of studying kanji frustrating. I picked this book up after having tried the old methods for a month, but only having remembered so few. The book is especially good if you are expecting to start learning japanese in a formal course and want to prepare ahead of time.

What Heisig has done is not revolutionary, but he is very consistent and systematic in the way he does it, which makes it a gift if you are willing to follow his book with blind faith.
The irony of Heisigs mnemonic method is, that he breaks with orthodox japanese teaching method (rote memorization) but instead insist on complete orthodoxy in his pupils doing imaginary memorization. You do it the Heisig way or it is the highway with this book. You start by kanji #1 and stop by 2042, and you MUST do it in the order that Heisig dictates. Otherwise you waste your time. And you need to complete it or you will be on crutches in your further studies of japanese.

Also you need a good grasp on english (but now spanish, french and german versions are out). You need to be comfortable with abstract thinking and you need to work hard imagining up stories that makes sense. Not visualising, that doesn't work. The method is described in detail in his foreword, and you can even get a sample PDF download of the first 270 kanjis from James Heisigs home page.

Critics of the book claims that it is useless to learn english kanji with no readings, but I beg to differ. The usefullness comes in that you can remember what *ALL* joyou kanji means and how to draw them. Just like a chinese can read japanese with some effort, and gain the meaning of sentences if not the readings, so can you after you memorzie enough. This alone makes tying readings and real words together much easier later on, once you have a semantic frame to hang the new information on.

Also critics point towards the fact that many Heisig students experience "burn out" at various points in their kanji journey. This probably comes from overexerting yourself. When using the book it is very important to keep reviewing the stuff you thought you *HAD* remembered, but not too frequently. And it is very important to really imagine up stories that fits the elements properly inside your head, or they will never stick.

Do not buy it if you do not plan to learn *ALL* 2042 kanji, because the order he does it in is completely different to the orthodox method with 1-10 grade joyou kanji. And expect to spend an hour per day working with it if you want to make progress. If you do it is a very rewarding experience. I rocketed up to remembering *AND* drawing over 500 kanjis in a month with this book. the pace slows somewhat after the first 500, but the method is sound.

The book stand-alone is too little to do this thing, and that is why Heisig encourages you to draw your own kanji flash cards for reviewing drills. But I found that too much of a hassle. Luckily there are many third party aids available, Leitner-based flash card programs and boxes of paper flash cards ordered after the Heisig indexing etc.

A Kanji learning masterpiece. (7/8 people found this helpful)

This book has taken a task I thought impossible and made it simple and enjoyable. I have been studying Japanese for 8 months and while I have progressed well with the speaking and listening, but the kanji has totally stumped me after learning the Kanji presented through pictographs. I find little time in a day to study japanese so the efficiency of this book was perfect. I have spent no more then 15-20 mins per day for the last 3 weeks and now can very very easily write and read (in english) just under 300 kanji and if wanted I can learn at least 23 kanji per day. I believe that as I am learning the language and the kanji as 2 seperate entities, they will come together pretty easily. I already know the pronunciations of many kanji just from learning to speak and am finding this is a much easier way to do it, otherwise everything gets mixed up and confused. I urge anyone wanting to study kanji to give this book a try as it makes life a lot simpler but also recommend not trying to learn the kanji pronunciations at the same time.

Remembering the Kanji: Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters v. 1 (Manoa)

James W. Heisig

Reader Reviews:

A month long love affair with Heisig, ending in a messy divorce! (0/0 people found this helpful)

You'll be hard-pressed to find a better method (0/0 people found this helpful)

A must have for Students (1/1 people found this helpful)

It is a love or hate thing (30/31 people found this helpful)

A Kanji learning masterpiece. (7/8 people found this helpful)

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