The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering 2300 Characters

I rarely post a review, but when I do, it's because the book really deserves it. This book is a fantastic resource for anyone who is serious in learning Japanese, but why you ask? What it has to make it different from other similar books? PROS You actually learn vocabulary in this book. The best way to learn on/kun readings is definitely learning the vocabulary with the kanji, what is more, this book always give you about three to five words/sentences for each kanji you learn, making this a super valuable tool for learning. The title of the book may be humble in its way, because it doesn't teach you 2300 characters. It teaches you much more than that, including the 2300 characters plus around a 6000 to 9000 words vocabulary to learn (rough guess, I didn't count). The vocabulary is taken from "The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary: Revised and Expanded", another great asset in combination with this book. To learn Kanji, this book have some things that makes it much more easier to learn than most books out there (believe me, I have several books for Kanji, and this is my favorite one so far), the order of characters is very well implemented and yes, the order you learn is really important, because you have to fortify the memories from what you learn. The best way to fortify your memories is through mnemonic, short stories or phrases that makes you learn and retain the Kanji. This book tries to follow a solid, concrete aspect, so you can distinguish between similar Kanji and meanings, although, of course with so much mnemonics in the book, a few of them may be not so helpful for you, in that case, you can think of your own story or mnemonic to complement the Kanji you are having difficulty. Aside from Kanji meanings/readings and Vocabulary, you can also learn the Kanji stroke order - very useful to learn to write them; and the traditional Kanji (probably used in specific literature books) which can be useful for advanced learners of the language. CONS The only thing I would change in this book, which would be great in my opinion, is to add the type of each word presented to you. For example, noun, verb, adjective, etc. It has sometimes distinction for vert transitive and intransitive. Problem is, this is a flaw from the Kodansha Kanji Dictionary itself, not this book itself. What happens is this book takes the vocabulary from there, therefore it doesn't include the type of the word nor any indication of what type of word is that vocabulary coming from. A simple example would be like this: 二倍 (nibai) double, 倍にする (bainisuru) double. One is a noun, and the other is a suru verb (to double), but as Kodansha Kanji Dictionary doesn't have indications for type of words, the new learner may have a difficulty time figuring out what the word really means. This was just a simple example that can cause confusion, but most of times you will never know if the word is a verb or noun if you are a beginner, so it's a good idea to use other dictionaries to pair up with this book. COMPARING WITH - Remembering the Kanji - by James W. Heisig I studied and completed the book Remembering the Kanji 1 - by James W. Heisig, and I have to admit, while Heisig does a good job on teaching the meaning of the Kanji, I personally dislike how the RTK book is lazy with stories and mnemonics. In the introduction, it says you need to create your own stories and mnemonics using the keywords of each Kanji, but in reality, the learner just wants to learn, and most of the time he/she won't have the time to create everything for each Kanji. This book on the other side is much more complete in that sense, because it gives you more stories, more phrases, and more content to build your memory with, without the need to waste time being super creative with tons of characters. You clearly see that this book loves more the Kanji than RTK or other similar books. Other problem is that RTK does not teach you the vocabulary in the same scope as you are learning each Kanji. This book here shines in this aspect, because you are learning the Kanji, and you are also learning common words that uses that Kanji, what is more, in a cumulative way. You won't see strange Kanji in the vocabulary until you learned them. SUMMARY This book is definitely the best book released so far to learn and memorize the Kanji and useful Vocabulary as extra. The only downside is the source - "The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary: Revised and Expanded" which doesn't teach you the type of the words - if it's a noun, verb or adjective.

I know Japanese up to the lower intermediate level (three college classes; ~1,000 words), and I really wanted to continue learning the language on my own, with a preliminary goal of reading shounen manga in their native tongue. Alas, every English speaker learning Japanese knows the huge hurdle that kanji represent when it comes to reading. I needed a method to pick up kanji effectively, so after reading the reviews and book descriptions, I selected this book because it was highly rated and, most importantly, because it includes all of the 2300 basic kanji (most books only include several hundred up to a thousand, requiring you to inconveniently jump ship to another book when you finish). I've been using this book for just over a month, having made a New Year's resolution to learn 4 kanji per day, a goal I set using the book's layout of 4 kanji per page. This will allow me to begin my dive into native materials before the year's end. I have found that compared to my experience studying kanji from textbooks (e.g. Genki, Tobira), Kodansha offers a much more intuitive experience. The basic Japanese textbooks just throw kanji at you and tell you to memorize them. They do not explain radicals, which can really simplify the learning and association process; they do not use visual mnemonics or etymological backgrounds; and they do not introduce kanji in an order conducive to learning. As two examples of many, Genki teaches the character for "road" (道) without ever first explaining the character for "head/neck" (首); or, Genki teaches the character for mother (母), without telling you that this represents breasts (turned sideways)...trying forgetting the character now! This isn't to fault the textbooks, as such explanations are beyond their scope; it's merely to point out the textbooks are a rather ineffective way to learn all of the kanji, particularly complicated ones. Kodansha, fortunately, uses a multi-dimensional approach focused on one thing: making the kanji stick in your mind. Depending on what is useful for an individual kanji, the book explains the kanji's meaning using the appropriate and salient selection of radicals, visual mnemonics, or etymological backgrounds, or any combination thereof. I like that this book (unlike others) does not force awkward or ill-fitting visual mnemonics or complicated and obscure etymological backgrounds on kanji where it doesn't work; the book uses only what relatively simple learning aid makes the most sense for each individual kanji. Furthermore, the book introduces kanji in a building block order, allowing you to utilize what you have already learned to simplify the learning of new kanji. For example, kanji are often introduced as combinations of kanji you have already studied; as conceptually related groups tied around a similar radical or idea; or as contrasting groups where similar appearing kanji with different meanings are compared by the stroke to emphasize what makes them visually different, explaining how to interpret that visual difference to underscore the different meanings. It achieves this without becoming dull and repetitive. Each kanji includes several, typically 3-6, example words. The example words are strategically selected to use kanji previously covered in the book, which helps reinforce what you have studied. Per the book's own recommendation, I find it most effective to learn each kanji in the context of the example words (instead of just associating the sounds to the single kanji), selecting 2-3 vocabulary that cover at least two (where two or more exist) of the kanji's pronunciations. As suggested, I write the new words at least 10 times each, reading aloud (or in my head) as I write, associating sound to character. Sometimes the words will be familiar -- you knew the word, just not how to write it. Sometimes, the word is new, so you increase your vocabulary. Using this method, I have not only expanded my kanji knowledge base, I have expanded my vocabulary. Additionally, each day, before I begin to study my 4 new kanji, I return to the previous day's kanji to write them, and then I will select 2-5 kanji (often ones I struggled with) from even earlier pages. Over the past month or so, I have comfortably learned ~150 kanji (I up to kanji #188, but already knew some of the kanji introduced). The book's main negative is its lack of context: it does not use example sentences for the words. I understand, however, that this is a space issue (the tome would be enormous were this included for all 2300 kanji), and furthermore, this is a kanji book, not a vocabulary or grammar book. And it succeeds at teaching kanji quite well. Particularly for new verbs, I use a dictionary to get an idea of the verb's usage. With a quick search on my phone's Japanese dictionary app, I do not even have to close the book while I look up example sentences when needed. Thus, I do not feel inconvenienced by the lack of examples. Granted, this is the first book of its kind that I have purchased, but I am convinced that there is not another book on the market to beat it for teaching non-native speakers kanji quickly and effectively.

Before this, I've used a couple of other methods such as WaniKani, RTK, and have been frustrated by them for one reason or another. And this book is working for me! How I use the book : I study 1 page (4 kanji and 6 associated vocab) every weekday and on weekends I spend time reviewing what I've learned the past week. I start by reviewing the Kanji I learned the last two days(8 kanji) and making sure I remember and am familiar with them. This generally takes about 10 minutes or less. Then I start by writing the the new kanji using the green book and getting the stroke pattern correct. Then I read over the mnemonic and look at any previous kanji or radical the explanation mentions. I really try to grasp the mnemonic in my head, and try to "visualize" the story. I repeat this for the 4 new kanji I am learning that day. This usually takes about 15 - 20 minutes. After this, I take the important vocabulary provided in the book and add that into an Anki deck and study the words. I never learn more than 6-7 words a day, so 6-7 vocab + 4 kanji is enough for me per day, as I also study Genki vocab and grammar. I generally spend about 45 minutes on Kanji each day, and never exceed an hour. I feel that this has helped prevent burnout. Anki is your best friend. There are a few anki decks available for this course, just use that if you are too lazy to make your own deck. Japanese is not an easy language to learn, and Kanji is the area where most learners give up due to the sheer number. As long as you are in it for the long haul, this book will work for you. It's not quick, it does not promise you things other courses do, but it will work if you are determined. Pros : - Mnemonics that work. The stories that the author provides for each of the Kanji are amazing and really help with memorizing and recalling the Kanji. It's strange how well this method works. - Order of the Kanji is amazing. Kanji that look similar are grouped together. The author makes sure to introduce you to the components of each Kanji before introducing the compound kanji. - Provides useful vocabulary words and circles the important ones. I personally find this very useful, as I only study the important vocab as I will surely pick up other vocab "in the wild". - The graded readers are a huge help. Each of the graded readers only introduces kanji you've learned before , this has not only helped me review the kanji and vocab, but it has also helped me become better at reading Japanese. Cons : - If you are aiming for some tests such as JLPT or are looking to learn in a specific order, this book may not be for you. The goal of the book is to teach you all the useful kanji, in an order that gets you there in the quickest and most efficient manner. - Introduction in the books is quite long, and is very tedious. I just ignored it after a few pages and have found my own way of studying that works for me. Overall, if you are serious about studying Kanji and aren't in a rush to meet some arbitrary deadline or goal, this book is the best resource you will ever find. It will help you learn Kanji, vocab, and meanings. Pair this with a great grammar book such as Genki, Tobira, Tae Kim and as long as you are consistent, you will see progress!

I studied Japanese for 2.5 years in college, and it was a nightmare having to learn kanji through various textbooks--the keyword there being various, because there are no college textbooks that cover all "necessary" kanji. The only option was to learn those taught in the textbooks (since that's what we were tested on). It didn't help that some chapters would cover 10, then the next could cover 50. The order was seemingly random for all books (maybe some influence from frequency and usefulness, though they weren't always useful). Nothing about learning kanji made sense. That is until this book! I'll start off by saying the order in which kanji are taught is highly taken for granted by most books. They either go with frequency, or perhaps follow the order in which Japanese children learn in school. These don't help an English speaker learn effectively. This book, on the other hand, follows a general order of frequency, but goes way beyond that. You will learn the more basic kanji first, so that if kanji B is made up partially of kanji A, you will learn kanji A first. Along with that, you'll find kanji that are graphically similar in closer proximity. The book of course covers all 2,136 Joyo ("official") kanji, but also an additional 164 useful kanji. It offers things like stroke order, alternate/traditional forms, and even mnemonics to help you remember each kanji. This means you need this book and only this book. No need to go cross-referencing various textbooks. No need to buy multiple books in a series just to learn keywords, then pronunciation and such separately. This book has keywords to reference the kanji, it has their most common pronunciations, and it has example vocabulary. This leads me to my favorite part of the book, the didactic vocabulary. Assuming you follow the order presented in the book, you will never encounter words with kanji that you haven't already learned (with a few marked exceptions). This is such a great feature. After all, you're trying to memorize these kanji as they're featured--what good does it do if the vocabulary for said kanji introduce even more kanji for you to memorize/learn before you're ready for them? I highly recommend this book to anyone studying Japanese, no matter their level. Do yourself a favor and start this book. You couldn't ask for a better resource when just starting out. This would help build such a good foundation in your kanji knowledge. The only thing that could be missing from this book is contextual sentences, but that would make the book much bigger than it already is. Luckily, there will be graded reading sets to accompany this book coming out soon for some extra practice. Of course, once you finish the book, you should have a much easier time reading pretty much anything.

This book is very similar to Spahn and Hadamitzky's Kanji and Kana book. Kanji are listed together when there is a sound phoneme they share or when they have like meanings based on a radical. Beyond that, there is an effort to list more frequent groupings before less frequent ones - exactly like the above. Positives - Mnemonics are useful. Not better than Henshall's or the U. of Chicago Kanji Alive project's based on DeRoo but they are useful. Example kanarazu has the "Cross my heart..." as P.G. O'Neill has in his book. It is a killer mnemonic. Also the KOU kanji for (resist, navigation, mine pit) are listed together as they should be. Another thing I always check for is taki (waterfall) and tatsu (dragon) together since they are so similar and suggest an easy story. These are together as well just as they are in S&H. Also positive is that certain non-joyo kanji like tsuji (crossroads) are listed. Every Japanese knows this one whether or not the powers that be chose to include it in the joyo kanji. Negatives - For some crazy reason obscure kanji like CHIN (the Imperial "We") are included just because they are Joyo. This kanji will only be used if you have an audience with the Mikado and write about it afterward - not much chance. A recent frequency ranking put this kanji at number 4000. Why include it (number 1252 in the book)? Also, obscure readings are listed. For warui (bad - number 546), they also list AKU and OU. Modern Japanese middle school kokugo textbooks (I have the Mistumura and Tokyo Shoseki books with the 2136 kanji) do not allow the teaching of the OU reading even though it is Joyo (as well as 250 other obscure official Joyo readings) because they are so infrequent and the students have plenty to occupy themselves with as it is. These crazy readings should have been put in brackets (as in S&H) and in Japanese middle school language textbooks where they are required to always use furigana when they appear. Also, I was told by native Japanese language processing specialists working for NTT in Tokyo while working in Japan for several years that your average Japanese knows about 2100 kanji. Only someone with a masters degree would know 2,300-2,400 with the last 200 being specialist vocabulary in, say, botany or geology to read technical journals in their field. (On the other hand, the dorm super at the company ryo I was at claimed he knew 50,000. Mm, you think he was right? You hear it all.) All the trade books have furigana noted on the first one or two appearances of obscure kanji, names or otherwise. Why teach them here? A book that teaches only the most important 2000 kanji is sold by Kokusho Kankokai (9784336053558 - 1/3 volumes) on www.amazon.co.jp It also teaches the kanji in the context of stories. It does not teach the "OU" (albeit Joyo) reading for warui or any other obscure readings. It also lists the important ateji without burdening you with the ateji for "wetnurse" and "sutra chanting" as the appendix in this book does. You might look on that as an alternative. In short, I think the text could have been improved by covering just 1600-1800 kanji and their moderately important readings - a formidable task by itself particularly when you are just learning them in a big long (and I do mean long!) list without story context. This number would give you truly significant Japanese reading ability and would be a major accomplishment attained by few who study this language.

If you pick one Kanji book, pick this one. In fact, if you pick this one, you will only need one book. You will never need another kanji book if you simply follow this course. This Kodansha course will get you to kanji-fluency in a fraction of the time of any other book. Throw Heisig in the trash. His system is theoretical chaff out of touch with the efficient and meaning-driven way humans actually internalize language. He seriously asks students to memorize an arbitrary English collection of meanings for kanji, and then redo the entire process a second time this time with actual Japanese meanings. His attempt to disconnect kanji from the Japanese language and turn it into a lifeless language of its own is not only linguistically out of touch (Japanese kanji and the spoken language are integrally tied in the native mind, they inform each other), but it is simply a labor in futility when you can just link the characters to native sounds and meanings the first time around. His method can work given enough time, but ANY learning method that involves practice and memorization will lead you to results if you stick with it rigorously and long enough. When it comes to real life learning, Heisig is a linguistic sophist. For a human adult living in the real world, his ideas are an absurdly out of touch sentimental theory that undersells the human brain's capacity for language internalization. This course does just that. It pairs seamlessly with any vocabulary, listening, and reading study, and gets you up and reading from the moment you're done with a character. Conning understands that real life linguistic *Applicability* trumps any theoretical gradient in meaning when it comes to forming the connections in the brain that constitute language absorbtion. However much time you put into this book, you will be up and running in just that amount of time. No strings attached. I do highly recommend the paired Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary for continued study and practice. Jisho just doesn't cut it once you're out of the beginner stage. Learning a language, especially if it's your first language learned as an adult, is a complex process, a skill in itself. But for Japanese, this book will give you all you need as far as writing is concerned. With this by your side you never need fear a kanji again, and can just focus on finding solutions for Vocabulary, Grammar, Listening, and Speaking. For new learners to get the ball rolling on vocab, I recommend the TangoN5 Anki deck. The new Kaishi 1.5k is highly overrated and falls apart after about 300 words. For grammar and speaking be sure to get a native tutor to supplement and inform your studies! There's a lot of misinfo online, 98% of it is non-fluent learners answering questions from other learners, but a native can tell you in an instant the correct way.

I spent a lot of time figuring out a good method to get up and running in Japanese. I work on conversational Japanese with the Shadowing series, work on grammar through a combination of annotated readers/grammar books, and use this book to learn the writing system. For learning Kanji, this is really the only book that you'll need. First I'll mention why I think this book is good. 1) teaches you all the general use kanji and then some 2) has vivid mnemonics for remembering kanji meaning 3) shows you the readings through vocab words and even suggests which ones you should memorize 4) all the suggested vocab uses only kanji previously covered in the course so each entry builds off previous entries. Every kanji has a number for easy reference and previously seen kanji are indexed in the sample vocab. Essentially, the book is designed so that you're frequently cross referencing other kanji and looking again at kanji you've already covered. 5) the book groups a lot of similar kanji together and does a good job helping you distinguish among them. It also warns you about similar looking Kanji elsewhere in the course so that you can train yourself to see differences. Now, how I use the book. Read through the entries just as he suggests to do in the intro, but I also add the suggested vocab (the ones he says you should memorize) into Anki to build my own Kanji vocab deck. I find doing this takes a little longer to get through the book, but I feel really confident in recognizing the readings and possible meanings of kanji that i've seen in the course thus far. Anyway, 5/5 for being among the best Japanese learning resources that I've encountered so far.

This book has been very helpful in covering the daunting amount of kanji necessary for basic literacy in Japanese. In addition, it has about 7200 vocabulary items, out of which about 5000 or so are commonly used words and are great for building your knowledge of the language. The author has opted to include mostly 熟語 compounds (words which are written only with kanji characters), which means that you will encounter frequently words that sound absolutely the same but are written differently and mean different things. In everyday Japanese conversations, those words are used often in business/formal environments, but are essential to being able to read well. The approach to studying the kanji characters is helpful again - first, in creating the optional vocabulary, the author uses only kanji which the reader is already familiar with. Many kanji books I've looked through do exactly the opposite - they provide vocabulary that uses the character the reader is learning + other unfamiliar characters. Second, the author is using the characters themselves to create little mnemonic devices which can help the reader recognize and remember the character. For instance, the kanji "親" has several meanings with the dominant one being "parent". If you look at it closely, you'll notice that it has three sub-parts: 立, 木, and 見, which mean respectively a "standing person", a "tree", and "to see". It is quite easy to associate them, as the author does in the book, with the idea of "being a parent" - the person standing on a tree in order to see what/how his/her children are doing. The book also tends to group similar-looking kanji together, so that the reader can spot the differences (sometimes those differences are tiny!). After completing the book, you will be able to start reading Japanese, although, as you will find out, Japanese literature contains a number of other commonly (or somewhat commonly) used characters that are not included in this book. You can find most of those characters in the 3rd volume of Heisig and Sienko's "Remembering the Kanji". The "Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course" is indeed an invaluable first step in covering the basics of the Japanese kanji system and while it won't teach you how to read fluently Japanese, it will teach you to recognize well kanji characters, remember their pronunciations, and be able to correctly pronounce unfamiliar words and easily find them in dictionaries.

Honestly this book is underrated!! It's exactly what I was looking for and it's ideal for visual learners like me. It covers all the frequent kanji, you learn each kanji thro context. I love that each page has 4 kanji the exact amount I'm learning every day. I love the mnemonics they're clear and make sense. I also like that the author put the similar kanji under eachother which is super helpful! The greatest thing is, it's really affordable unlike the other sources that don't even cover all the joyo kanji. I don't memorize all the words just the ones that I think they'll be useful to learn, also when it comes to the readings I memorize the one that I saw in the words that I chose to memorize. I just pick one or two words at maximum for each kanji and I add also my own sentence that includes the kanji I just learned (I use chatGPT or Wanikani to search for the sentences, you don't need to pay for WK just use the search bar right away). I just have a small note, it doesn't feel like a course at all but more of a dictionary. The title is a bit misleading for those who actually looking for a course. Also if you're a complete beginner I suggest waiting a bit till you're familiar with some kanji. Watch videos with Japanese subtitles as well, honestly this is how I memorized many kanji without effort.

I use this book to help practice handwriting and differentiating Kanji between similar ones. Overall, it's pretty good for this. I can't vouch for using it as the only study material, but using it to supplement your other vocabulary sources works like a charm. Given that it's core selling point is the mnemonics, some of them fall a little short in terms of quality, but most are at least evocatIve enough to be memorable. Where I think the book shines the most is the ordering. Some sources will use the Kyoiku Kanji Levels as orderings, some will use the NLPT, some will use frequency, and some will use stroke orders. I don't have a lot to say about those approaches. The ordering in KKLC is a fine piece of craftsmanship. You start out with simpler Kanji in terms of writing, but you learn things like 無 before kanji like 束, so it's also influenced in part by frequency. Kanji that are used together very frequently show up next to each other, so you learn 約 and 束 one after another. After a short while, the ordering focuses a lot more on radicals, so you can easily tell different Kanji with the same radical apart (e.g. 寺,侍,時,待,持,詩 all come at the same time). In addition, you learn practical Hyougai Kanji, and some Jinmeiyou Kanji. This is especially helpful for the mnemonics (e.g. 尺 is not used often in Japanese, but it's taught in order to facilitate Kanji like 釈 and 駅) One qualm is with the spine. It's a real pain to keep the book open while writing, especially in the beginning. On top of that, the spine will wear after holding it open in one spot for too long. That's an inherent flaw with paperback, though, but it's especially noticeable with this book. Just something to keep in mind. Overall, very, very pleased. Use this to supplement you Anki deck, grammar workbook, practice material, etc. If you have trouble distinguishing and writing Kanji, this is the way to go, in my opinion. With it, you can learn the stroke order, radicals, readings, example vocabulary, and mnemonics, which not many other sources can advertise.

A lot of efforts went into this course and it shows. A must for any serious student.

Produto completo, excelente para os estudos. Chegou antes do previsto, em boas condições e bem embalado. É fácil e prático de usar. Bom custo benefício.

So far the course has been great. Do read the intro to this book very carefully, it will pay dividends later. If you have even the slightest background in linguistics but you appreciate a practical approach still, you'll particularly love what the author did! Even if you don't, this is pretty much as close as you can get to a perfect approach for dedicated Kanji study in my opinion. Now I get why KKLC is a staple in japanese language learning! がんばって！