 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | 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. It is intended not only for the beginner, but also for the more advanced student looking for some relief from the constant frustration of how to write the kanji and some way to systematize what he or she already knows. The author begins with writing because--contrary to first impressions--it is in fact the simpler of the two. He abandons the traditional method of ordering the kanji according to their frequency of use and organizes them according to their component parts or "primitive elements." Assigning each of these parts a distinct meaning with its own distinct image, the student is led to harness the powers of "imaginative memory" to learn the various combinations that result. In addition, each kanji is given its own key word to represent the meaning, or one of the principal meanings, of that character. These key words provide the setting for a particular kanji's "story," whose protagonists are the primitive elements. In this way, students are able to complete in a few short months a task that would otherwise take years. Armed with the same skills as Chinese or Korean students, who know the meaning and writing of the kanji but not their pronunciation in Japanese, they are now in a much better position to learn to read (which is treated in a separate volume). |
Average Customer Rating:   really good tool for remembering the kanji From time to time the stories that the author will present are a bit streched out, but in the great majority of cases they will be a real help.
Before using this book I only tried to memorize the kanji, and in a bit of time I always forgot the meaning or the way it was written; since I started using this book I never forgot one, and I hope I will continue this way!
Perhaps the key words used are not always the best you would choose, but it will be sufficient for you to take a whatever japanese (simple) text, like a manga, and you will soon recognize the kanji and the meaning will take root in your brain.
I really recommend this book. Helps you remember the Kanji FAST! Why spend years to learn all the kanji when you could do one lesson a day out of this book and have them all down in two months? I'm just starting out learning Japanese, but I'm already several hundred characters into the book and it is of tremendous help in deciphering written Japanese. Recognizing so many of the characters I see is really giving me the confidence to go on with the language. I don't know what I would do without Heisig's book! If you want to learn all the Jouyou Kanji in a short period of time, this is really the only feasible way to do it. Actually helpful for the JLPT.....if used wisely I'm currently studying for the JLPT2 (more on that later), and my weakness with the Japanese language has always been kanji. I bought this book because it promises a different way to learn the meanings of about 2000 characters, using the imaginative memory. For the most part it works, but it does have serious shortcomings to the serious Japanese student.
There are several reviews already written, so I won't go into many details about the book. Heisig presents kanji in a completely different order than the traditional Japanese system through concentrating on radicals. He begins each section with a radical that gets assigned (usually) a one-word meaning. The idea is that by breaking down characters into discrete, meaningful chunks you can use them, like blocks, to build a story to remember what the kanji means and how it's written. It works. In just a few months I've solidly learned about 500 characters using his method.
However, a Japanese student should not expect this to be the "kanji solution" because it's not the whole package. It's not intended to be. He does not offer any readings and his attributed meanings are VERY basic, sometimes not capturing the entire connotation of the character. Some meanings are plain odd, like "hit on the head" for itadaku, but these are very few. He does have two more books that apparently do address readings. I'm not using them, so I can't offer any opinions.
The book does demand time and concentration. This is especially true for kanji whose radicals don't neatly match the meaning. In order to remember the kanji your story needs to be strong and clear, and awkward stories don't do the trick. There is a great support website called Kanji Koohii where the online community offers their own stories. This website is a huge help when Heisig ends his story contributions (at about the 1/3 mark) or for tricky characters.
Back to the JLPT... In my opinion, this book can be used extremely effectively as part of a study system if you're willing to make some additional time and money investments. The trick is to use Heisig to ground the character, then switch to a more formal resource. I use this book in conjunction with the Kotoba application on my iPod and White Rabbit Press' Kanji Flashcards. Heisig and the cards have completely different numbering systems. Kotoba acts like a cross-reference tool to different ordering systems, including Heisig, so I can pull the more robust flash cards as I move through the book. Heisig is simply the initial step just to remember the basics. It's a kluge, but it works.
You will need to follow the author's ordering because of how the method works. If you plan on studying by Japanese grade level or some other way, you can't if you want to include this book. On the other hand, it includes the 2042 common kanji, so everything is covered. It's a different road, but you'll get there in the end.
Overall, it's a great tool for serious language study when used in its right context. Great for learning kanji-meanings I bought this book after looking at [...] so I knew what I was going for, and the way he explains the kanjis meanings and a way to remember them are really easy to understand, and good, without becoming boring:) This is a valid method- for some Most of the positive reviews you see for this book seem to be from people who are excited to memorize so many kanji so quickly, but who don't yet realize how much work is still ahead of them. Most of the negative reviews are from people who learned or tend to learn language in a way different from this method. What neither side realizes is that this is *a* good method for introducing the kanji- it's not only one, and it might not even be the best one, but it's a good one, to the tune of a 5-star review.
The positives. Would you like to be able two write over two thousand kanji in under six months, while everyone else around you will have probably tried and failed to get even a few dozen of them down at the same time? Would you like an environment that's so fun and intuitive that it feels more like play than study? Would you like to flat-out amaze yourself with your incredible progress day-to-day? (I swear I wasn't paid to write this). Heisig's method is IN-CRED-I-BLE at making the normally daunting task of learning the kanji an absolute blast! I sat down with the sample chapter, and had over 30 kanji memorized inside of an hour. I am completely comitted to Japanese literacy now- what once seemed like the most difficult task of beginning the language (familiarizing the kanji) now feels more like educational recess. I practice my kanji on work breaks becuase it's so refreshing to immerse myself in it.
The negatives. You will recognize the kanji after this course of study, without actually knowing anything about using them. The book only gives you one very basic interpretation of a stand-alone kanji, and this is nearly useless in real literacy (even if it is a boon to memorization). Most students familiar with the traditional all-at-once method of learning will point and scoff at how ridiculous it is to have to learn so many characters twice when you could do it once.
But forget the foreign language for a second. Are you the sort of person who can sit down and read a dictionary in your own language, right now? There are some people who can do this, who can just absorb pronunciations and definitions and usages of words all at once. This book is not for them- they need to grab something like P. G. O'Neill's "Essential Kanji" and tackle it head-on. Personally, I could sit down and read the entire English dictionary, and struggle to remember a single thing. Why would I expect any different results rote memorizing a Japanese dictionary?
There's one other aspect of this course that needs some thought. Here, you learn to see a symbol and instinctively put information to it. This very closely mimics how you know your own language- you don't have to trace out stroke order for every character and piece together meaning. You just see "the" and "next" and "word" and "in the sentence" as blocks. Learning via this method allows you to be much more naturally fluent in recognizing your characters. You just see "four" and think "four". Once you know "four" as a concept, I think that makes it easier to heap on "yottsu" than the traditional method, where you learn "yottsu = a certain squiggle" and have to map "four" onto that just to create one concept (even though the result is the same). The author compares this to Chinese-fluent persons learning Japanese, who are familiar with many of these symbols already, and just need to learn the Japanese readings and usages. These students do show faster progress gaining literacy than students totally unfamiliar with the characters, and the end result for you should be the same.
So, as others have noted, the first chapter is online for free. Try it, and see if this style of learning is for you. For a lot of people, this style will be a very refreshing take on what will ultimately be a difficult and perhaps years-long journey no matter how it's sliced. |  |
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