The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji: Remembering and Understanding the 2,136 Standard Japanese Characters Kindle Edition

My Japanese is VERY limited and it is quite daunting to learn, though way easier than Mandarin, having a fine book like this does a lot to spark my interest. Tuttle's Complete Guide To Japanese Kanji is a comprehensive book of essential Japanese characters including a limited chart of katakana and hiragana, but really more focused on the Kanji, complete with history, etymology, stroke order, word usage and mnemonic tricks. Filled with tons of information, this is completely fascinating, also lots of fun to read and is one of my favourite Japanese books. Not a dictionary but more of a catalogue of Kanji, so having a Japanese dictionary as well is necessary- luckily, Tuttle's Concise Japanese Dictionary is excellent. I am very impressed by Tuttle's Japanese and Chinese books, and also recommend the similar Reading and Writing Chinese for Mandarin, if you have both you'll see the Chinese roots of many Japanese characters. Also recommended their Japanese Stories and Japanese Folklore For Language Learners, a bit advanced, but a fine set of simply told traditional tales in bilingual format with vocabulary and cultural word lists.

This book summarizes the origins of all 2136 Joyo Kanji required for learning Japanese. It also provides a short mnemonic for each character.The consensus of advice I got was to use this book as a supplement to the Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course, which has a better learning order and mnemonic system but doesn’t have much information about etymologies. KKLC organizes all the Joyo Kanji in a logical learning order with an efficient system for remembering each kanji and its main vocabulary, while this book gives you thorough background information that adds another dimension to your learning. With these two books for kanji, plus a good textbook like Nakama, plus Rikai-kun/chan/sama, the Makino grammar books and some kind of reading material, you are in good shape to teach yourself how to read Japanese.You can’t really teach yourself kanji from this book by itself, because you would learn the characters in a mostly random order with no blueprint. Also the mnemonics are not always very helpful, and don’t add up to a structured and consistent system (this is where KKLC is in a class by itself). Still, I like that the mnemonics in this book provide a different perspective, with some useful insights that KKLC doesn’t have.Some people might find the etymologies a bit too much, since they go into discussions of different academic interpretations of where a character came from and how it developed over time. Personally I like having access to this information, even if it’s mostly just for curiosity. Although most of the etymologies are not easy to apply for mnemonic purposes, many of them are interesting in themselves. Also they can be very helpful for understanding the nuances of a kanji, which you can't get from a dictionary.The etymologies cram in a lot of information and citations, but they’re written in a compact style, as are the mnemonics. I like how neither talks down to you or wastes your time with silly nonsense or cuteness.To get the most value out of this book, use it as a reference book rather than as a textbook. Be purposeful in drawing out the information that helps you, and ignore the rest.

Quite nice update to the original book. Positive changes - first section has the 1006 educational characters in its superior pedagogical order to the previous 996; characters are shown in clear large print which is much easier to discriminate than the previous brush strokes; all 2136 new kanji are included of course; JLPT levels are marked, however they had to arbitrarily decide if a character is L2 or L3, also all characters other than L2-L5 are marked L1, what else could you do although in the older rankings 26 rare kanji were properly left out of the listings, ex #1731 (CHIN) now has an L1 listing whereas previously properly left out; mixed ON-kun kanji examples are printed caps/small for components which is nice (ex #1187) unlike before.The etymologies have undergone a lot of rewrite with sources cited. Sometimes this is really helpful. As an example #1234 KIN meaning "fungus, bacteria". I slightly prefer O'Neill's "fungus, germ" but not bad. In the etymology, it is clearly shown that the character originally meant mushroom and fungus (Shirakawa and Shuowen). Try reading the etymology and the character springs alive! (note the crowding concept in the character). Often it is more useful than the mnemonic given. In addition the examples are really good here and throughout the book. Here SAIKIN is bactera (detailed germ) and KINRUI (fungus type) means fungi - excellent. The example compounds in the book are really great with short and accurate definitions.By the way, Kanji Alive (U. of Chicago) online also has really nice mnemonics for all N2-N5 and kyoiku kanji as well as others and are based on DeRoo. Some of those mnemonics are really super.

I've had the first ed for, what, 20 years? Something like that. This is a welcome and noticeable improvement over the previous edition. I'm not a fan of the silly mnemonics (if that's your thing, go for the Kodansha Learner's Dictionary) - I want to dive into the etymology of the kanji. THAT is what helps me learn/remember, and that is where this book excels.Love it.

The only part I don’t like about the book is there is no sequence of strokes for each kanji. It gives you general rule in the beginning of horizontal battle vertical but no strokes arrows for each kanji.

I bought this updated version to replace my 1st edition. The explanations seem better. I really enjoy the historical references that tell the story of the kanji. Very helpful book in learning or looking up kanji. The mnemonic devices are very helpful and I like that it is presented in grade order. This, along with The Key to Kanji by Williams are very helpful in memorizing the kanji. Of course, there are some great items online that are helpful too. Wish I'd had these 30 years ago when I first started learning Japanese.

Muy completo y en partes, aún así le hace falta los Hiragana

The book explains very well the progression of kanji and has great introductory background information on the evolution, main components, essential radicals and meaning behind each kanji. The only thing I would say is that the pronunciation section for each kanji should have been written in Furigana 振り仮名 instead of romaji, this part is actually incredibly annoying for someone trying to learn the language from a foundational perspective, but the book remains useful notwithstanding.

This is an excellent book for learning the 'updated' 2136 jōyō kanji (常用漢字) - ''standard use'' Chinese characters..... Back in the 1960's there were 1850 standard-use Chinese characters used in writing the Japanese language, but this book brings you ''up to date'' with the latest list of general-use kanji.This book is good value for money. It's well laid out, and makes it easy to look up any general-use kanji by counting the number of strokes (which it tells you how to do), or by using the so-called ''Radical'' method of looking up the meaning of any general-use character. (Counting the number of strokes is the easiest method for me). The kanji range from one stroke (only two of them) up to a character that has 29 strokes! Fortunately there is only ONE of those!Keep in mind that there are thousands of kanji used in books and documents written in Japanese, but ''general reading'' such as newspapers, etc, is restricted to using the 2136 characters listed in this book.Overall, I highly recommend ''The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji'' for beginners and advanced alike.

Hatte dieses Buch gekauft, um Kanji von Grund auf (also im etymologischen Kontext) zu lernen. Leider taugt das Buch dazu nur bedingt.Das Hintergrundwissen, das in dem Buch vermittelt wird, ist durchaus interessant und einer der Aspekte, die zur Aufwertung des Werkes führen. Es gibt einen geschichtlichen Abriss über die Entwicklung der chinesischen und japanischen Schrift von den frühesten Anfängen bis heute. Dies wird in den ersten 7 Kapiteln und Kapitel 8 bis 8.2 des Buches abgehandelt.Ab dem Abschnitt "Hiragana and Katakana and Their Source Characters" fängt es an, seltsam zu werden: Anstatt Unicode verwendet der Autor in der Tabelle handgemalte Schriftzeichen, die streckenweise kaum zu lesen sind und offenbar von ungeübter Hand mit dickem Stift geschrieben wurden (Zeichen haben uneinheitliche Größe, sind schief, usw.). Dabei steht nur der englische Name des Kana Zeichens (keine Erklärung für die Kanji in der Tabelle).Die Tabelle der Derivative wird einem ebenfalls ohne weitere Erklärung hin geworfen. Dabei steht nur die englische Bedeutung des Schriftzeichens und ggf. die verkleinerte Form für Komposita. (Hier verwendet der Autor diesmal Unicode, so dass die Zeichen wenigstens lesbar sind).Auf die Strichreihenfolge wird in einem kleinen Kapitel separat eingegangen, für die einzelnen Kanji aber nicht extra aufgeführt.Wenn es dann zum Hauptteil des Buches, den eigentlichen Kanji-Beschreibungen geht, dann wird es erst so richtig ärgerlich: On- und Kun-Lesung werden nur in lateinischer Umschrift (Romaji) angegeben, nicht jedoch in Kana (das darf man sich dann selbst erarbeiten bzw. aus den Fingern saugen).Mnemonische Hinweise erfolgen zwar, aber nur in Textform. Ein Bild wäre evtl. hilfreicher gewesen.Ansonsten sind die Kanji nach den 6 Schuljahren geordnet, und zu jedem Kanji werden etymologische Hinweise gegeben. Leider muss man zum Lernen der Schrift weitere Literatur zu Rate ziehen, da weder Strichführung noch Kana zur On-/Kun-Lesung angegeben sind.Daher von mir nur eine mittelmäßige Bewertung, da das Buch seinem Anspruch "The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji" nur teilweise gerecht wird.

Totalmente recomendable. Me gusto que tiene la historia de los orígenes del kanji lo cual es algo que my curiosidad me había insistido en investigar. Las explicaciones son claras y es fácil de entender. Muy buen libro de referencia y apoyo en el aprendizaje del kanji. 👍🏼