KANJI

Learning Kanji (漢字) is considered to be the biggest roadblock to learning the Japanese language. However, without kanji reading the most basic Japanese is impossible.

In order to read a Japanese newspaper you will need to know about 2000-2500, but that’s not the hard part.  Learning about 10,000 compound kanji/vocabulary that use those individual Kanji, is the hard part.

see The Japanese Language for more information on Kanji

Many people attempt to learn Kanji in by traditional methods. However, after several hundred distinct Kanji, the going gets more and more rough and like Gilligan many crash and give up.

Doing brute/rote drills will eventually connect the meaning to the image, but these connections are easily broken. Further, rote drills (ie. writing over and over) take far too long. For me, there was nothing that linked Kanji to their meanings, and that is why I would forget and have to relearn Kanji repeatedly.

That was until I rediscovered Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig. I laughed off this book as a waste of time, until I spent a year living in Japan, making little progress learning Kanji using traditional methods.

In the early 1980s professor James W. Heisig (Nanzan Institute in Nagoya, Japan) figured out a great way to learn the Kanji. He used “imaginative memory” to help long-term memorize 2000+ kanji. Instead of trying to remember each character through repetition, he broke up each Kanji into their base components, then he linked the components together to the meaning of each kanji using imaginative/visual stories. Using his method he was able to learn how to write, distinguish, and learn the meaning of 2000+ kanji in a few months and astonish the learning community. Later he published a book called Remembering the Kanji. At this point I need to mention that this book will will not teach you how to read Kanji.

see Method Overview for details on the best way to learn the reading of kanji

The RtK method may sound completely ridiculous. However, it works very well, and very fast. The point of RtK is to teach you how to write and distinguish between 2000+ distinct kanji. Each pictogram(kanji) is connected to a Keyword(which is usually a definition). It’s like learning an alphabet of a foreign language before learning the words.

see Excerpts from the Introduction of ‘RtK’ to find out more about the book
see Remembering the Kanji Method for example of how this method works

Back in the day Heisig was asked to prove his method to the faculty of the Kamakura language school, and blew them away. He did so well that they claimed he had photographic memory. But don’t take my word for it. This is an interview with James Heisig telling his story.

see Sample of Remembering the Kanji, Vol. 1
buy Remembering the Kanji, Volume. 1 (Amazon Price: $25.00)

Further Reading:
Introduction to NiHONGOCENTRAL.com
Method Overview
Remembering the Kanji Method
How Long will it Take to Learn Japanese?
Interview with Professor James Heisig

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