The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary: Revised and Expanded: 2nd Edition

While it contains only a third of the Kanji required to pass the JLP N1 exam (The final JLP exam), it clearly explains the structure of the kanji, particularly with compounds and words that have prefixes and suffixes, which if you already have a good comprehensive Kanji dictionary, can allow you to better understand how the Kanji are structured and why, and therefore better understand the meanings in context(I recommend Merriam-Webster's Japanese English Dictionary as the dictionary to pair with this item, although if you buy it you WILL need a magnifying glass, because the book is a small portable sized book and there are 22,000 translations and 48,000 entry words and phrases, so the font is extremely small). Overall, this is an excellent tool if your goal is to truly understand Kanji, how it is written, and why it is written that way, and can be used to help you learn new Kanji beyond what is contained in the book as well, since its explanations of structure and meanings are so clear and efficient.

I was a little intimidated when it came to choosing a kanji dictionary to help me with my Japanese studies. It was crucial that I had one that would be easy and intuitive to use but would have all the critical kanji for both my preliminary goal of being able to read N2 materials and my long term goal of knowing all the kanji for reading fluency. This dictionary so far has really come through for me. It not only has the Joyo and Jinmei kanji needed for basic fluency at N1 (far beyond my current goals), but the radical and pattern indexes used in the book for finding unfamiliar kanji are a breeze to use once you get used to how they work, which doesn't take that long. This dictionary will definitely be the backbone to my kanji studies going forward, and I may even get a second copy for any trips to Japan that I may take.

Excellent resource, would 100% recommend.

It's a kanji dictionary that has instructions on how to use it.Very happy with this purchase.

cover wripped

Stroke orders, easy look up, and numerous example sentences. A perfect companion to anyone studying Japanese.

The SKIP method in this book is amazing and makes learning kanji fun.

This is a very thorough guide to Japanese Kanji, but only for committed learners. It assumes the reader knows Hiragana and Katakana symbol systems.