Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47519 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 460 pages

Synopsis
The aim of this book is to provide the student of Japanese with a simple method for correlating the writing and the meaning of Japanese characters in such a way as to make them both easy to remember. It is intended not only for the beginner, but also for the more advanced student looking for some relief from the constant frustration of how to write the kanji and some way to systematize what he or she already knows. The author begins with writing because - contrary to first impressions - it is in fact the simpler of the two. He abandons the traditional method of ordering the kanji according to their frequency of use and organizes them according to their component parts or "primitive elements." Assigning each of these parts a distinct meaning with its own distinct image, the student is led to harness the powers of "imaginative memory" to learn the various combinations that result. In addition, each kanji is given its own key word to represent the meaning, or one of the principal meanings, of that character. These key words provide the setting for a particular kanji's "story," whose protagonists are the primitive elements.

In this way, students are able to complete in a few short months a task that would otherwise take years. Armed with the same skills as Chinese or Korean students, who know the meaning and writing of the kanji but not their pronunciation in Japanese, they are now in a much better position to learn to read (which is treated in a separate volume).

Customer Reviews

A must have for Students
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
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.
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.