Japanese Characters: Illustrated

I picked this up at Kinokuniya Books NYC last week and use it as a "bedtime" or "study on the go" filler. I already know around 400 kanji and this mini book does a good job of refreshing my memory and helping me learn new (albeit not always useful) vocabulary and kanji origins. The only negative --- the vocabulary words are either too easy or too hard.

Overall, I thought that this rather modest pamphlet was extremely useful and valuable. It is definitely worth your money. I was at first rather skeptical of this booklet: it cost a lot, but had barely 200 pages of 4 x 6 inch pages. Once I started reading it, I was impressed with the amount and quality of the information. It gave me a very valuable and informative introduction to the whole subject of formal, PRINTED Kanji. If you are interested in how Kanji works mechanically and a few basics for people who know nothing about Japanese language, this is your book. I was quite impressed in that it was specifically designed for the beginner: it assumes you know absolutely nothing about Japanese, which matched me perfectly, and I got a lot of good info from it; I suggest you buy it if you are even a little interested in Kanji. It starts with 20 pages of written Japanese basics. Next is a dozen or so basic words. Then 2 dozen everyday words. If finishes with a dozen pages of culture about Kanji. Lastly is 3 pages of extremely valuable Kanji and proper pronunciation (colors, numbers, family members, months, time, etc.). Each Kanji character is given a rather extensive explanation: it's origin, how it evolved, and how it is currently used. This gives the typical westerner a warm, fuzzy feeling as to the origin of the Kanji character. Sadly, each basic character is used in a widely divergent number of Kanji meanings, to the point that knowing the Kanji character's origin is of no use to its current meaning. This definitely a fault, but that of the Japanese language, and not the book's. Written Japanese uses 3 different alphabets: Katakana (for foreign words that have been imported to the Japanese language), Hirigana (a phoentic alphabet more or less equivalent to a western alphabet), and Kanji (a pictogram based language that has a distinctive picture for virtually every word; yes, I do mean to imply that even a superficial knowledge requires the rote memorization of thousands of unique pictograms). Most written Japanese is a melange of all 3 alphabets. Many Kanji characters are a combination of 2 simpler characters, and most words are a combination of 2 Kanji characters. Please note what it is not: there is no information on Hirigana, Katakana, hand written Kanji, abbreviated script, pronunciation, grammar, culture, etc. Let us be realistic: even a superficial knowledge of Kanji requires years of concentrated education. After concentrated effort and memorization of this booklet, perhaps you can get to know a few of dozen Kanji words, hardly enough to read even a newspaper. Kanji has at least 3 different levels of difficulty I know of; the so-called 'Imperial' Kanji requires a regimented learning course of 20 years. This book will give a simplistic but useful introduction as to what Kanji is and how it works. Highly recommended. The most surprising advantage of this book is how much knowledge this book imparts, and how little time it requires

I'm a Japanese native speaker and have been teaching Japanese in the US. I've never seen anybook which has a short, but accurate, summary about Japanese written system. The brief historical background will help you know why infamous Japanese written system is unique. The graphic is very friendly for non-native speakers. Good for both teachers and learners.