Remembering the Kanji I: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters Vol. 1 4th Edition (Japanese Edition) 4th Edition

If someone would have told me that I'd be able to learn the Kanji at a rate of 25 per day (or more), I'd have thought they were selling some sort of dorky memory product on TV. I wouldn't have bothered. If someone told me I'd remember their meaning and writing, even stroke order, very easily, after 30 minutes or so spent on each set of 15 or 25 (or more), I'd have thought it was impossible. But it's exactly what I'm doing. And if anyone could see that I'm doing it now, they would be impressed. They would think I was a bloody lingual genius being able to learn this fast (or just psychotically motivated).Now let me tell you a secret. I'm a pretty smart person, but know what? I'm probably not much of a genius, or if I am, this sort of "absolute memory" is certainly not my genius. It is THIS BOOK that gets the credit (and neither am I psychotically motivated, for the record--it is rare that I muster even this much motivation).Here's a little story of how I amazed myself just now. As I've been going through the book, I've been using little flashcards to review (messy ones I made myself--there are PILES of them all over my room, hehe). Not too surprisingly (I trusted this book and expected this), I could remember the meaning of every single kanji I reviewed. Great, huh? But I still said to myself, "Well, remembering the meaning is the main thing. It's no big deal if I can't write them from memory." Of course, I was expecting that, already impressing myself by remembering their meaning, I wouldn't be able to also write them--that was just too hard. But guess what? Just now, I proceeded to write out, from memory, with no mistakes and 95% accuracy, every single Kanji I've learned.How can this be? I am really proud of myself, that's for sure.Simply, this book uses "imaginative memory" instead of brute memory. Little anecdotes and funny mental images will click in your mind, and you'll easily recall these arcane little word pictures, these Kanji. And you're thinking it must be harder than it sounds, right? Wrong! It's actually easier than I make it sound!! (Although I should mention that it DOES require effort. At first, I thought it was never going to work. But then I tried the flashcards and remembered every one of them. It works so well that you don't really even notice--it's like you've always known the things.)PUSH through, give it a shot. You will HIGHLY impress yourself. Want to learn kanji? If you are self-motivated (and want to teach yourself--this will NOT work very well as part of a class), this is the way to do it.This is volume 1, and it will teach you the writing and meaning of over 2000 Kanji (it's like 2145 or something). It will NOT, however, teach you their "reading," meaning while you'll know what they mean when you see them written, you won't know how to say them in Japanese. That is the job of volume 2, a guide to the reading of the Kanji. Volume 3 is the advanced course, teaching you both the reading and writing of a bunch more Kanji that are useful for reading Japanese novels, technical documents, video games, etc.Some say this is a flaw of the book, that meaning/writing and reading are seperate, but it's not a flaw! It is its beauty. By isolated these seperate skills into two volumes, and focusing on each in turn, it unlocks your true ability to learn.These books are amazing. I highly endorse and recommend every single one of them: Remembering the Hiragana/Katakana, then Remembering the Kanji volumes 1, 2 and 3, all by James W. Heisig, who has basically written the best way to learn Japanese by accident (it's how he learned, and fellow students begged him to write out his notes for them, thus, the books were born).One final note: If one were to take two lessons a day, about like 30 Kanji a day, you'll finish in a month (there are around 62 lessons in this book). So, really, you could go through all three books in a matter of 3 months. Slow it down a little, one lesson a day, and it's 6 months, which is still jaw-droppingly fast. The Hiragana/Katakana book (which you should do first) will take about two weeks (it's pretty short). Not bad for a crash-course in reading Japanese, is it? Then all you have left is grammar and stringing it all together into your own thoughts and sentences. At least now we can say that THAT, the grammar, speaking, etc, is the hard part, because for years, westerners have said the "hard part" was learning their weird writing systems. Well, now that's the easy part, thanks to Heisig-san, and if you like the language, even the hard part will be enjoyable for you.I'll see you in Japan!

The book had a lot more writing in it than mentioned.

James Heisig learned over 2,000 kanji in the span of several months, and he did it without having a photographic memory. How did he do it?Individual kanji are ideograms. That is, individual kanji are symbols that stand for ideas and concepts. While it is obvious by looking at many kanji that there must be some kind of rational system behind them, many books that purport to teach kanji fall back on some semblance of this method:"See this kanji? It means mountain. See the mountain behind the kanji? See it? Good for you! Now you'll recognize the kanji for 'mountain' whenever you see it! Now here's a whole bunch of kanji with the 'mountain' symbol in it that seem to have nothing to do with mountains! Memorize them!"Or even worse: "See this kanji? It's pronounced (several Japanese words depending on context) and means such-and-such in English. Now memorize a zillion more!"Heisig's premise is simple and reasonable:1. Adults remember associations more easily when the association is a story than when the association is void of meaning. This is also known as the technique of mnemonics, or aids to memory.2. Individual kanji stand for concepts, and your native language already has names for those concepts.3. You already know your own language. You do not know Japanese (or at least, you do not know Japanese as well as the Japanese themselves do).Heisig's system has been called "revolutionary". All three of the above premises, when combined, does lead to a revolution in adult learning of kanji -- as well as kana, which Heisig et al have published in the book "Remembering the Kana".I would be hard-pressed to remember over 20 random associations without stories. With Heisig's help, I have learned and _remembered_ over 70 kanji in under one week.I do not know the Japanese words for the kanji. The book does not claim to teach you that.I cannot construct grammatical sentences in Japanese. The book does not claim to teach you that.I do not know the meaning of compounds of kanji. The book does not claim to teach you that.So while this book may not teach Japanese grammar or the speaking of Japanese, the book does teach the meaning of the kanji, and how to remember that meaning, which does far more than most books that try to teach more than this at one time.You don't believe it? Well, keep an open mind and _try it_. Heisig has allowed us all to try the first 276 kanji _for free_ at [...] It is a PDF version of the first part of this very book whose reviews you are looking at. If you're not hooked by the first 20 examples, your brain may not be that of an adult human!

I know that this method of remembering the kanji works for some people but unfortunately I couldn't make it work for me.

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.

After 10 years I can safely say with a certain amount of coincidence that I am good enough at Japanese to live daily life in Japan. I bought this book 10 years ago and I can say that it was not worth the money.After reading the reviews here giving 5 stars, I am slightly shocked. For any serious student wanting to learn Japanese, I will explain quite simply what this book does and doesn't do, and whether it is something for you. My recommendation of course, would be to face facts and know that Japanese takes time, as with any other language, the secret is time, and determination.The main problem with this book, is that you have to complete it. Not only that, none of that actually teaches you any Japanese. Read that once again.Remember back at school when we learned the alphabet, 52 of them, upper and lower case. We also learned pronunciation, A is for apple, B is for ball.Languages such as Korean and English, their alphabets can be learned within days, mastered within weeks. However without words, grammar, structure. You haven't learned anything except the building blocks.Japanese is made up of 3 alphabets, katakana, hiragana and kanji. This book teaches you about the third, but even then, you don't know how to pronounce any of them, know how to pair them together, or even their proper meanings, since most have multiple uses. All have several readings, paired readings, paired meanings, grammatic usage. This book teaches you absolutely none of that. Worse than that, none of these symbols have any use at all, when talking and listening, or a book that uses no kanji.Without context, grammar, progressive kanji learning and basic sentences and structure. Without memories, learning using this book is more of a hinderance than a revelation, and is no different to buying an English dictionary, memorising each word one by one and expecting to become fluent in English as if by magicIf you want to impress your friends by writing the kanji for single use words, such as dog, or house and tell them the meaning in your native English without context, then this book is indeed for you. However, for any serious study, you have to face facts and know that learning is not impossible, just slow. Like with any other language.If this book was indeed as amazing as it sounds, you'd have heard about it by now, it would have been on the news, would have been adopted into schools, become Science fact as the next generation way to study. This book can indeed help you to memorise hundreds of kanji very quickly, but not in any real world practical use.In conclusion, even if you know how to write 2000 symbols what can you do with them? English has the easiest alphabet in the world, but is one of the most difficult languages to master. That fact alone should hopefully give you enough common sense to realise that this book isn't going to the magic book that you hope it is. Ignore the 5 star reviews and don't waste your money like I did.