Remembering the Kanji 1: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters: v. 1: Amazon.co.uk: James W. Heisig: Books

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary

by Jack Halpern

4.6 out of 5 stars (15) �15.06

› Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

japanese(1)

kanji(1)

learning(1)

Customer Reviews

11 Reviews

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for learning the symbols in isolation, 23 Oct 2009

By	J. A. Marczak (Manchester, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The one thing this book does do extremely well is help you to learn individual kanji. It does this by making up small stories and images that help you relate the English meaning to the symbol. If this is all you want from the book, then it is a 5 star book.

However, it is lacking in other approaches that are really required to understand Japanese, so you will need other books to allow you to use what you have learned. The kanji are categorised in complete isolation, there's no mention of how they fit together in a Japanese sentence, or how the meaning might alter depending on the context. There's also no pronunciation guide.

It's a bit like having a vocab book that's full of individual words but no phrases or indication of how to use them. So, as a vocab book alone it is superb, but it is not sufficient in itself to really understand kanji.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book was just awesome!, 17 Jun 1999

By A Customer

Heisig's book is the most effective tool I have found for learning the kanji. No this book will not teach you Japanese. No this book does not teach you the adult kanji like the Japanese teach their children. No this book will not give you all the possible different compounds for every single character. If you have at least moderate powers of imagination this book is for you. Before I ever lived in Japan, before I ever thought of studying Japanese, I fiddled around with RTK 1, because I wanted to learn some kanji because I like calligraphy. 30 minutes maybe twice a week, and I learned the first 400 characters in one month. Once I found myself in Japan, furiously trying to learn to speak and write Japanese well enough to survive and do my job, RTK 1 was a great asset. I would get some practice books to write the characters out a little more then suggested in the book if you desire clean legible handwriting, and I would also get some nice notebooks to store your stories that you need to write yourself towards the end of the book. Definately make some flashcards they are a must. The English word given with each character is not the DEFINITION as one of the other reviewers mistook it for it is a KEY WORD! A KEY WORD! Kanji have several different meanings depending on how they are used and with what other characters. The key word is to give you an easy to remember handle on that particular character. (Who cares that the gall bladder character is included early, if you put out a little effort you should know all the characters in the book in 3 or 4 months anyway good grief. Complain for a living?) Once done with RTK 1 go on to 2 and 3 to further strengthen your kanji foundation. Reading and writing in Japanese is your best bet to keep them in your memory permanently though. (I don't see anything wrong with Japanese Dragonball manga thank you very much. A Japanese pen pal wouldn't hurt either.) My only complaint is that all the characters don't have pre-written stories. That's because I'm pretty lazy :-) Good luck, and good reading...Ganbare! �'�‚�!

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Befriend the Kanji!, 11 Mar 1999

By A Customer

Heisig's book is brilliant. It is the most effective method for learning to write and understand the meaning of kanji that I have encountered. The problem with other methods is that one is expected to learn too much at once: several on and kun readings, compounds in which the kanji occurs, stroke order etc... With Heisig's method one learns a key word related to the kanji's meaning and how to write the kanji. Generally the keywords chosen are excellent (interestingly, in most cases they are similar to definitions given in a chinese dictionary I have). Furthermore this book teaches you a method for learning the kanji that could presumably be extended to characters not included in the book. Thanks to Heisig for what is a very useful tool in learning Japanese.