Kanji Books that I have studied

This is a list of Kanji (漢字) books that I either (Own), borrowed then (Read), or borrowed then (Browsed) through. It is sorted by category (ranging from beginner's books to advanced reference works). I read most of these over a 6 month period (July-December 2007).

Children's books

Surprisingly, a number of textbooks intended for Japanese schoolchildren can be quite useful for adult English speaking learners. Warning: these books kind of assume the reader can already speak Japanese and have a working knowledge of basic Japanese vocabulary.

サンマーク出版　新すじみち学習１（国語ジュニア版幼～１年）, ひらがな・かたかな, 枻川恵一(1996)

(Own) This is part of a series of textbooks (link to the whole series here) for teaching 国語 (kokugo) to Japanese schoolchildren. I bought the first three volumes for A$5 each from the Artarmon second hand Japanese bookshop. The first volume teaches Hiragana and Katakana for kindergarten kids. It introduces vocabulary relating to each of the kana symbols, and some of the exercises are quite fun. I also like the mini-poems to help memorise the characters.

サンマーク出版　新すじみち学習２（国語ジュニア版幼１年）, かんじ１, 枻川恵一 (1996)

(Own) Volume 2 teaches Grade 1 漢字. Each character is introduced together with 音読み (onyomi), 訓読み (kumyomi), meanings, stroke order, a short story featuring usage of the character, usage notes, and a brief etymological description of how the character's shape has evolved (with pictures).

サンマーク出版　新すじみち学習３（国語ジュニア版幼２－３年）, かんじ２, 枻川恵一 (1996)

(Own) Volume 3 teaches Grade 2-3 漢字. The 部首 (bushu) and components of the character are also described, as well as hints on how to write the character properly, and a mnemonic to help remember the character.

小学１－６年きそから学ぶ, 漢字ドリル, 株式会社遊タイム出版

(Own) This is a series of Kanji drill books (6 in total, one for each Grade). I found these pretty useful, and they are really cheap, A$2.50 each from Tokyo Mart.

五島 正一郎 & グレン ファリア, 小学生の英単語レッスン, これ英語でなんていうの (Let's Enjoy Learning English), 成美堂出版 (2002) ISBN4-415-01621-2

(Own) This is a picture book showing the English and Japanese equivalents of various words, together with a CD. Although it is intended for Japanese schoolchildren learning English, I found it equally effective learning Japanese vocabulary. Bought for A$6 from the Artarmon second hand bookshop.

Heather Amery, The Usborne Internet-Linked First Thousand Words in Japanese, with Internet linked pronunciation guide, Usborne ISBN0-7460-2310-3

(Own) Similar to the previous book, but intended for English speaking schoolchildren learning Japanese. This book does not contain 漢字, so not as useful as the previous book.

Beginner's books

The aim of these textbooks are to introduce the basic 200-500 characters to adult beginners.

Joyce Yumi Mitamura & Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura, Let's Learn Kanji: An introduction to radicals, components, and 250 very basic kanji, Kodansha International (1997) ISBN4-7700-2068-6

(Own) The first Kanji book I bought when I started learning Japanese. A very systematic book - it starts by teaching how to draw and count strokes, then introduces the radicals, common components and finally introduces about 250 characters based on the radicals and components. Highly recommended, but may scare off the complete beginner or those who don't like learning things from first principles.

Yolanda Trueman, Kanji in topics, a Japanese workbook, Five Senses Education (2001)

(Read) This introduces 250 basic kanji, grouped by subject/topic. I quite like this book, it's easy to go through and also helpful for revision. Also highly recommended.

Tae Moriyama, translated by Bob and Reiko Gavey, Kanji Connections: Hints on How to Differentiate 400 Easily Confused Characters, Shufunotomo Co., Ltd., 1988, ISBN 4-07-976592-4

(Read) This is not really a beginner's book, but only teaches 400 characters. The main aim is to introduces characters which are very similar to other characters, to help the reader differentiate and distinguish them. I really like this book. Each character is introduced with readings, pictorial origins, and a story based on etymology. Highly recommended.

武部 良明 (Yoshiaki Takebe), 漢字はむずかしくない:24の法則ですべての漢字がマスターできる (Kanji Isn't That Hard! Kanji Can Be Mastered with the "24 Rules"), ALC (1993) ISBN4-87234-217-8

(Own) An attempt to introduce the basic rules that govern the creation of kanji characters, and representative characters illustrating the application of those rules (8 per rule, or 192 in total). The book provides stroke order, meaning, reading, picture and a story for each character. What I really like about the book is that it is billingual - everything is explained in both Japanese and English, so I can improve my Japanese reading comprehension at the same time as remembering the characters. An additional set of characters are provided at the end of the book (with stories provided in Japanese only). The stories don't appear to be based on etymology or radical/phonetic decomposition, but seem to be reliant solely on the shape of the character. Therefore, I probably would not recommend this book.

Matsuo Soga/Michiko Yusa, Basic Kanji, Taishukan Publishing Company (1989)

(Read) This book (intended as a supplement to the Foundations of Japanese Language textbook) teaches about 210 "basic" characters, plus an additional 213 "supplementary" characters (which are not beginner level but useful to learn). Each character is introduced with radical classification, meaning, reading, stroke order, a story, example compound words, and example sentences. The story appears to be etymology based, and calls out the phonetic marker when appropriate (yeah!). I really like this book, so it is highly recommended, but I suspect it is out of print.

みんなの日本語初級I　漢字英語版 (Kanji I - English Edition), 3A Corporation ISBN4-88319-147-8

(Read) This is an introduction to 漢字 intended to accompany students of みんなの日本語. Like the rest of the textbooks in the series, it tries to teach 漢字 using a minimum of English. There is an introductory section covering basics of how to recognise and write characters, and then it introduces just over 200 characters, aligned to みんなの日本語 Book I lessons. I really like the way it introduces each character, firstly via pictures, then through a set of structured exercises. The end of the book introduces radicals, and groups the characters learnt (as well as additional characters) by radicals, and conveys the meanings associated with each character. Highly recommended, particularly if you are also studying using the みんなの日本語 series.

みんなの日本語初級I　漢字練習帳 (Kanji Exercise Book I), 3A Corporation ISBN4-88319-291-1

(Read) This is a 漢字 practice workbook, using a slightly different set of characters than the previous book. It allows you to practice writing each character and studing the readings, then offers a set of example sentences. Firstly, you are required to provide the readings of characters introduced in each lesson, then you are asked to write the same characters (using the same sentences). I didn't find this book as useful as the first, but it's good for reviewing rather than learning the characters.

Yasuo Yoshida, Keizou Sajim, Ikuyo Nishide, The First Step To Kanji, Part I, Osaka University of Foreign Studies (1969)

(Read) This is the earliest 漢字 textbook for beginners (written in English) that attempts to teach via etymologically based stories, and surprisingly it's still one of the best (though sadly long out of print). It introduces 300 characters, providing readings, stories, and example sentences/compounds. It's bilingual (the text is written in both Japanese and English side by side) thus allowing the students to choose to study the characters by reading the stories in either English or Japanese (very useful).

Yasuo Yoshida, Keizou Sajim, Ikuyo Nishide, The Second Step To Kanji, Part I, Osaka University of Foreign Studies (1971)

(Read) This continues from the previous book by introducing another 500 characters, thus bringing the total number of characters described by this two volumes to 800.

The (教育漢字) Kyouku set

The aim of these textbooks are to provide overviews of 学年別漢字配当表 ("list of kanji by school year"), which is a list of 1,006 kanji and associated readings developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education. This list prescribes which kanji, and which readings of kanji, Japanese schoolchildren should learn for each year of elementary school. Although the list is designed for Japanese children, it can also be used as a sequence of learning characters by non-native speakers in order to limit the kanji to the most commonly used.

Taeko Kamiya, Subject-Grouped 1016 Kanji in Context: A Guide to Reading Japanese, The Hokuseido Press, 1997 ISBN 4-590-01043-7

(Read) Reorders and groups the characters into subject order rather than grade order. I like the concept, but question the execution, some of the groupings of the characters seem a bit strange to me - I suspect the grouping is done to chunk the characters into manageable collections to be learnt as sets. Each character is introduced together with readings and meanings, stroke order, and representative compound words.

川嶋 優 & 尾上 兼英, 小学生のための　漢字をおぼえる辞典, Obunsha (2001) ISBN978-4-01-077596-7

(Own) This is a dictionary covering the 教育漢字 set. Each character is introduced along with a picture illustrating the meaning, stroke count (radical, plus rest of character), reading, stroke order, meaning (story), writing hints, compounds, and some reference notes. To be honest, I prefer the earlier edition which arranges the characters by radical and stroke count order, as it has many addendums to provide explanations on groups of characters. The current edition seems to be grouped by grade and stroke order, and misses out on most of the addendums.

実用日本語　漢字　1,000, 絵で見る漢字1~100課, 新宿日本語学校 (1992)

(Read) This is a 3 volume set introducing the 1,000 characters over 100 lessons. Volume A contains the teaching material, Volume B is the workbook, and Volume C is the reference book. No English is used, the reader is supposed to learn the meanings and readings of characters purely by context. The reference book is a standard dictionary type volume providing stroke order, meanings, readings, representative compounds. I really like this as a learning set beyond beginner's level, so it is highly recommended (except I suspect it is out of print).

Michael Rowley, Kanji Pict-O-Graphix: Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics, Stone Bridge (1992)

Quite a fun book, describing 漢字 in terms of stylised pictures. It is based on a component decomposition approach, so it's not as silly as it sounds, and the author references Henshall as a source. Unfortunately, whilst the typography and pictures are attractive, ultimately I didn't find the approach as effective as I thought it might be.

The (常用漢字) Jouyou set

The aim of these textbooks are to provide overviews of the entire 1,945 kanji issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education on October 10, 1981. (enhanced version of general use set or 当用漢字, which was the initial list of secondary school-level kanji standardized after World War II.)

James W. Heisig , Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters, Japan Publications Trading Company, 5th edition (2007)

(Own) This book seems to be quite popular amongst the self taught and has a good "buzz" on the Internet, and lots of dedicated, passionate users. A free sample of the first part of the book (teaching about 200 characters) can be found here. I bought it and used it for about 2-3 weeks, but then decided it didn't meet my needs. It teaches a slight superset of 常用漢字 (2042 characters in total), and is based on remembering a self-constructed "story" acting as the mnemonic for the meaning and shape of each character. It didn't meet my needs because I wanted to study not just the meaning but the etymology and readings associated with each character. Also, Heisig's approach seem to be solely based on decomposing each character into a set of primitives, but Heisig primitives are not related to either radicals or phonetic markers. Finally, I also found Heisig's keywords rather misleading for quite a few of the characters (Hester's analysis of Heisig keywords against the core meanings in the Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Dictionary suggests that as many as 20% of Heisig's keywords do not match the core meanings of the characters).

James W. Heisig , Remembering the Kanji Vol. 2: A Systematic Guide to Reading Japanese Characters, Japan Publications Trading Company, 1st edition (1987) ISBN0-87040-748-1

(Own) This book assumes the reader has completed Vol. 1, and attempts to teach the 音読み (onyomi) and 訓読み (kunyomi) associated with the characters introduced in Vol. 1. Since I have never finished Vol. 1, I have bought but never read this book.

Kenneth G. Henshall, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, Tuttle Publishing (1988) ISBN0-8048-2038-4

(Own) This is probably one of the first books in English that attempt to document the etymology of each character. It goes through the full 常用漢字 set arranged by grade, and stroke order. Each character is introduced with an index number, 音読み (onyomi) and 訓読み (kunyomi), sample compounds, etymological notes and a helpful one-sentence mnemonic to assist in remembering the character. The mnemonic will not make sense unless you have read the etymology description. I initially found this book quite useful, but the etymological explanations can be quite dense and difficult to follow as Henshall tracks various alternative etymological explanations and debates their historical accuracy. My Kanji teacher says Henshall is often wrong, so take his explanations with a grain of salt.

Father Joseph R. De Roo, 2001 Kanji, Bonjinsha (1980)

(Own) This book is basically a condensed Kanji dictionary. It's quite useful in that it provides meaning by reading, and attempts to teach Kanji in a way similar to Heisig's Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1 either by breaking each character into components (De Roo calls them "graphemes") and associating a "story" to help remember each component. I far prefer De Roo's stories to Heisig, so if you like Heisig's approach you may want to check out this book. The downside of De Roo's approach is that he does not pay attention to the radical and phonetic markers, which may prove to be stumbling blocks as you become more advanced. De Roo's graphemes do appear to be a near superset of radicals, but he doesn't single out the radicals (which is a pity, since they carry strong semantic connotations, far stronger than the phonetic component).

Andreas Foerster & Naoko Tamura, Kanji ABC: A Systematic Approach to Japanese Characters, Tuttle Publishing (1994) ISBN 0-8048-1957-2

(Own) This book is written after the above books, and essentially avoids the mistakes made by the previous books. It decomposes characters into components (also called "graphemes" by the authors) but *is* sensitive to radicals and phonetic markers (the graphemes are a near superset of the radicals and phonetic markers). There are twenty six grapheme groups (A-Z) and each character is associated with a grapheme group. Each character is introduced with readings, grapheme decomposition, core meanings and references to other dictionaries (Spahn & Hadamitzky, Halpern, Nelson). No mnemonics/stories are provided, but the reader is encouraged to make up her own. I like this book, but wish the authors would call out and specifically identify the radicals and phonetic markers, instead of just being "aware" of them. I also wish etymological notes are provided.

Yaeko S. Habein, Gerald B. Mathias, The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji, Kodansha International (1991) ISBN 0-87011-793-9

Of all the books in this category that I have read, this is the only book I would recommend without reservations. This book follows almost exactly the way I have been taught Kanji by my teacher, by classifying and grouping each character based on etymology, introducing the basic characters and radicals first, then followed by semantic composites, and finally phono-semantic characters (which are the most common - there are 1,310 of them in 常用漢字 and around 80-90% of all 漢字 are in this category) grouped by phonetic components. Sadly, this book appears to be out of print.

藤堂 明保, 例解学習漢字辞典, 小学館; 第六版ワイド版 (2004)

I noticed that many of the beginning 漢字 books I have read that are based on etymology (Basic Kanji, First/Second Steps, Kanji Connections etc.) references 動物の漢字語源辞典 which is effectively *the* reference book on 漢字 etymology. Well, the author has a version intended for Japanese schoolchildren, that focuses primarily on the 常用漢字 set. I have just ordered this book from Amazon Japan, and anxiously awaiting it's arrival (there is a "standard" as well as "Doraemon" edition of this book, and of course I ordered the "Doraemon" edition :-)!)