“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… By showing how to break down the complexities of the Japanese writing system into its basic elements and suggesting ways to reconstruct meanings from those elements, the method offers a new perspective from which to learn the kanji.”

“There are, of course, many things that the pages of this book will not do for you. You will read nothing about how kanji combine to form compounds. Nor is anything said about the various ways to pronounce the characters. Furthermore, all questions of grammatical usage have been omitted. These are all matters that need specialized treatment in their own right.”

“That having been said, the goal of this book is still to attain native proficiency in writing the Japanese characters and associating their meanings with their forms. If the logical systematization and the playful irreverence contained in the pages that follow can help spare even a few of those who pick the book up the grave error of deciding to pursue their study of the Japanese language without aspiring to such proficiency, the efforts that went into it will have more than received their reward.”

“The reader will not have to finish more than a few lessons to realize that this book was designed for self-learning. What may not be so apparent is that using it to supplement the study of kanji in the classroom or to review for examinations has an adverse influence on the learning process. The more you try to combine the study of the written kanji through the method outlined in these pages with traditional study of the kanji, the less good this book will do you. I know of no exceptions.”

“… I have never met a Japanese teacher who can claim to have taught a foreign adult to write the basic general-use kanji that all high-school graduates in Japan know. Never. Nor have I ever met a foreign adult who would claim to have learned to write at this level from a native Japanese teacher. I see no reason to assume that the Japanese are better suited to teach writing because it is, after all, their language. Given the rational nature of the kanji, precisely the opposite is the case: the Japanese teacher is an impediment to learning to associate the meanings of the kanji with their written form. The obvious victim of the conventional methods is the student, but on a subtler level the reconfirmation of unquestioned biases also victimizes the Japanese teachers themselves, the most devoted of whom are prematurely denied the dream of fully internationalizing their language.”

“… Picture yourself holding a kaleidoscope up to the light as still as possible, trying to fix in memory the particular pattern that the play of light and mirrors and colored stones has created. Chances are you have such an untrained memory for such things that it will take some time; but let us suppose that you succeed after ten or fifteen minutes. You close your eyes, trace the pattern in your head, and then check your image against the original pattern until you are sure you have it remembered. Then someone passes by and jars your elbow. The pattern is lost, and in its place a new jumble appears. Immediately your memory begins to scramble. You set the kaleidoscope aside, sit down, and try to draw what you had just memorized, but to no avail. There is simply nothing left in memory to grab hold of. The kanji are like that. One can sit at one’s desk and drill a half dozen characters for an hour or two, only to discover on the morrow that when something similar is seen, the former memory is erased or hopelessly confused by the new information.”

“… I began my study of the kanji one month after coming to Japan with absolutely no previous knowledge of the language. Because travels through Asia had delayed my arrival by several weeks, I took up residence at a language school in Kamakura and began studying on my own without enrolling in the course already in progress. A certain impatience with my own ignorance compared to everyone around me, coupled with the freedom to devote myself exclusively to language studies, helped me during those first four weeks to make my way through a basic introductory grammar. This provided a general idea of how the language was constructed but, of course, almost no facility in using any of it.

Through conversations with the teachers and other students, I quickly picked up the impression that I had best begin learning the kanji as soon as possible, since this was sure to be the greatest chore of all. Having no idea at all how the kanji “worked” in the language, yet having found my own pace, I decided—against the advice of nearly everyone around me—to continue to study on my own rather than join one of the beginners’ classes.

The first few days I spent pouring over whatever I could find on the history and etymology of the Japanese characters, and examining the wide variety of systems on the market for studying them. It was during those days that the basic idea underlying the method of this book came to me. The following weeks I devoted myself day and night to experimenting with the idea, which worked well enough to encourage me to carry on with it. Before the month was out I had learned the meaning and writing of some 1,900 characters and had satisfied myself that I would retain what I had memorized. It was not long before I became aware that something extraordinary had taken place.

For myself, the method I was following seemed so simple, even childish, that it was almost an embarrassment to talk about it. And it had happened as such a matter of course that I was quite unprepared for the reaction it caused. On the one hand, some at the school accused me of having a short-term photographic memory that would fade with time. On the other hand, there were those who pressed me to write up my “methods” for their benefit. But it seemed to me that there was too much left to learn of the language for me to get distracted by either side. Within a week, however, I was persuaded at least to let my notes circulate. Since most everything was either in my head or jotted illegibly in notebooks and on flash cards, I decided to give an hour each day to writing everything up systematically. One hour soon became two, then three, and in no time at all I had laid everything else aside to complete the task. By the end of that third month I brought a camera-ready copy to Nanzan University in Nagoya for printing. During the two months it took to prepare it for printing I added an Introduction. Through the kind help of Mrs. Iwamoto Keiko of Tuttle Publishing Company, most of the 500 copies were distributed in Tokyo bookstores, where they sold out within a few months. After the month I spent studying how to write the kanji, I did not return to any formal review of what I had learned… When I would meet a new character, I would learn it as I had the others, but I have never felt the need to retrace my steps or repeat any of the work. Admittedly, the fact that I now use the kanji daily in my teaching, research, and writing is a distinct advantage. But I remain convinced that whatever facility I have I owe to the procedures outlined in this book.”

-James Heisig