This is a serious question prompted by a thread mistakenly posted to the Introductions forum. I’ve been learning Japanese for quite a long time now, and I’m totally out of touch with “systems” used to learn kanji; I’m operating in pure Japanese when dealing in them heavily. This is not the situation for most learners. In fact, I’m personally completely at a loss at how to answer the deceptively simple question, what is the best way to learn kanji for Japanese?

So, I thought it best to ask here on the Languages forum and gather thoughts and ideas. It’s a good question, and I’m very interested in the answers, both for my own knowledge and for its value to students and learners of all stripes.

I’ve found several main stream ways to learn kanji. These two are the most controversially discussed and opinions differ on which is better.

1. Learn it as you go. That sounds simple enough. Pick up kanji during lessons, learn the stroke order and pronunciation (at least the pronunciation used in the sentence) as well as the meaning all at once. Because it’s in context, it should be easier to remember. Usually the group of people who learn kanji this way advocate for it quite well and say that kanji should never be studied as its own thing. They believe kanji is part of the language and should be studied within the language.

On to group two!

2. These are the people who think it’s better to learn kanji completely separately and merge later (or learn kanji before learning anything else at all!). The Japanese blog AJATT (All Japanese All the Time) explains how to use this method. Basically, all kanji are learned first (aside from hiragana and katakana, but because you won’t be doing any other Japanese practice during this time, it’s fine to do these after the kanji as well) through Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji. Work on kanji every day and use an SRS (such as Anki) to make sure you don’t forget. After learning the kanji you find sentences and start studying those. Of course, it is possible to use Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji while learning grammar and such.

In all honesty, I prefer the second method. It’s well structured and you can feel your progress. You know what kanji to work on next and you can break everything down into small doable tasks (I do 5 kanji a day, sometimes extra). It may be a bit different if you’re already surrounded by Japanese and if you’re already familiar with a lot of grammar and vocabulary (but I think this would make it all easier). I personally know 265 kanji now through this method. While it’s not a ton, it’s definitely more than I knew a month ago.

Maybe you should try out Heisig’s RTK. At least give it a look, and if you don’t like it you could try method 1 (not as easy as it sounds) or find another method (I’m sure there’s plenty more).

Joe how is your comprehension with the Kanji using the 2nd method. After 200 Kanji’s I can’t seem to get over that hump.

I posted in the other thread before seeing this one, but I thought I’d post my thoughts here, too. Feel free to ignore it, though, as I basically ranted on about the first method Joe mentioned, haha.

"I know a lot of others may have said this already, but learning words with their kanji as you’re first introduced to them could be a great way to learn. You learn words, not kanji, in a sense. Learning that “かわいい” is “可愛い” will help you to recognize the word whenever it comes up later on in your readings. On top of that, you start seeing characters repeat in compound words, and that may solidify what you know already. I’m guessing you eventually start getting a sense for which kanji make which sounds. Kind of like a really, really, really large alphabet in which sounds repeat, heh heh.

That’s how I would learn my vocabulary and kanji before I completely switched over to Chinese, at least, and it worked fine for me. ^^’ When you think about it, us Chinese students are forced to do that all of the time, too. We learn each word as it comes. We don’t learn that 乐 can be pronounced yue4 or le4 then try to apply it to words like 快乐 (kuai4 le4) and 音乐 (yin1 yue4). We learn each word with its characters when they’re first introduced to us. :D

I hope this helps a little. Just my opinion; everyone has their own study and learning habits that could be best for them. :3"

Here’s what Anki has reports:

Correct mature: 78.9% (15 of 19)
Ideally, the mature cards (cards which have an interval in your deck for 21 days or more….which basically means you’ve gotten them right until your note card program decides it can wait 21 days until it has to refresh you with the card) should be at 80-95, so this is a bit lower than I’d like it to be (but out of 19 cards the reports are a bit skewed as each miss counts as quite a bit).

Correct young (basically, not yet at the 21 day interval): 82.2%
Total correct: 83.1%

So, basically, that means out of the 265 kanji I’ve studied, I should be able to recognize (keep in mind these cards are done from the definition to the kanji, so that I am given the key word and I have to remember how to write it) close to 220. As time goes on and I learn more kanji, I will continue to retain that number and it will continue to go up. At 2200 kanji (if my percent remembered doesn’t go up, which I’m sure it will) I should be able to remember 1826 of them when given the key word (often times I will easily be able to recognize it the other way as well). While that may seem quite poor (lets be real, that’s almost 400 kanji I’ve studied and _still don’t remember), I will be able to study the 400 or so kanji that I keep messing up more often because the cards I know will show up in rarer intervals (as the cards progress it will remind me in 3 days, then 9 days, then 21 days, then a month, then three months, and so on….as long as I continue to remember the kanji).

Also, when I ‘finish’ up the kanji I will have more time to find sentences and words involving all of the kanji, which should make those other 400 much easier to remember (I’ll have more to associate them with). Basically, the only obstacles for all of this are time and effort. As long as I continue, I’ll learn them all (and same goes for anyone else!).

Keep in mind this is only for the meaning of the kanji and the writing. The pronunciation is supposed to come while you learn sentences. I know this all sounds really complicated and like a LOT of work, but that’s what it is. It’s a lot of work. This is an entire language! The kanji aren’t just magical symbols, they stand for meanings and words, and there’s a lot of words in language!

Err. Was that too long? I guess I was ranting again. I hope I didn’t make it all confusing, haha. Just ask for clarification if you’d like it.

Edit: I was posting this before Adrian posted, so here’s a bit more:
I have to agree that while I’m supporting the second method here the first one is also excellent. I have learned successfully from both methods. I think in the end it really depends what type of learner you are. I prefer small, manageable, structured tasks. The type of thing where I can sit down every day and say “okay, it’s time for my 5 kanji”. It just works for me (and it doesn’t always work for everyone). I like how Adrian explained the first method in his third paragraph. Much better than I did, :D

I can handle learning the kanji with the meaning if it only had one sound but what I am having problems is learning the multiple sounds (On and Kun readings)Sometimes a kanji would have another sound to it though rare, do I ignore it? Let me give you why I am so frustrated"The Kanji a(geru)-rise 上（げる）　My Kanji study book says the On reading is じょう and しょう with the Kun reading as　うえ。The meaning is upper. It also has several other Kun readings with different meanings. かみ、うえ means upper part, あげる is to raise,あがる、のぶ（る）－to rise, のぶ（せる/す）　means to bring up topic. So for this one kanji: 上　there are 9-10 different readings! AGGGHHH!

While I’m not yet on pronunciation, I think it’s best to avoid learning the readings in such a way. Instead of learning the On reading and Kun reading, it may be best to simply learn the words they’re used in, and how those words use the pronunciations. That should clear up that problem fairly easily. As you get used to the words you’ll know the readings. Everything should be a lot less confusing that way. Maybe there’s some sort of hole in my logic, like I said I haven’t gotten there yet.

I was also told by a tutor to study the word with the meaning so maybe I’ll try that so I won’t go insane! Adrian, Studying Chinese too! Wow that just seems like more kanji to study with DIFFERENT pronunciations! Dang….

esther: my problem with studying kanji is exactly the same as yours. Theres just too many components to the kanji that needs to be learned. When I was in college, I learned much better because I had designated kanji I needed to learn by a certain time. Now that I’m out of school, I’m trying to find the perfect way for me to learn. For me, it’s all about repetitiveness. I like using books to learn my material and right now I’m just looking at a book of 1,000 kanji. There are 5 kanji on each page and I just stare at them on and off all the time. I look at the kanji, the readings, and the words they are used in. I look for anything I can to help me link things but when it comes down to it, I’m just memorizing I suppose. To check my knowledge, I find someone to quiz me. I definitely do not have every onyomi and kunyomi memorized or every vocab word given with the kanji. But by constant exposure is how I get the characters, readings, and vocab to stick. Over time, more will stick and I will recognize the kanji or vocab later. It’s kind of like flashcards but in book-form I suppose.
Also, going to Japan and being exposed to all the daily occurrences of kanji is also great, if you have the chance :P
It’s all about constant exposure. The more I see it, the more used to it I get. For me, at least.

I’ll comment as a native Japanese speaker than a Japanese tutor.
@Esther – the average Japanese person won’t be able to recall all the various kanji pronunciations on it’s own, but will be able to read it in context such as 台詞（せりふ）、手綱（たづな）、and 時化（しけ）. It will be like “oh yeah, forgot about THAT way of reading it….” They’re usually the exception, so I’m with most of the combined suggestions, learn/drill kanji withe their basic readings and meanings, learn as you go “in context”, and memorize those exceptions as just that, exceptions.

@Esther
Haha.
Actually, learning kanji/hanzi as a Chinese student is a lot easier. Each character almost always has the same pronunciation whenever it comes up. There are exceptions, like the one I posted above as an example, but they aren’t as common as they are in Japanese. Like 开 (to open) is pronounced kai1, and 心 (heart) is pronounced xin1. When they’re combined to form 开心 (happy), the word is still pronounced kai1xin1.
So although Chinese has some different pronunciations that take some getting used to, the characters are almost always pronounced one way, so Japanese students have it harder. Again, there are exceptions, but still. ^^’

In either case, 頑張って下さい! I know you’ll be reading and writing kanji like a pro soon enough. :>

Hey,

Check out the kanji section on http://www.japaneseportal.co.uk. I can’t recommend Read the Kanji enough. It encourages you to learn the whole word, not the ‘on’ or ‘kun’ readings – which is the best way to do it in my opinion :-)

Good luck!

I have always been fascinated by the Kanji writing. My Japanese studies professor and friend told me that learning Kanji is best if learned in bundles or groups with the intervention of writing activities. :)

I’ve been considering all the replies here. I also found a sample of “Remembering the Kanji I” that includes the introduction by the author. This was extremely useful for understanding where the system is coming from.

I have been reading here and there from the “AJATT” blog – obviously the arguments from that blog about the Japanese education system standard kanji learning order being messed up, come directly from Remembering the Kanji. I don’t really have any distinctive love of the ministry-approved order so I don’t intend to defend it to anyone.

However, I find far more to be wary about in Heisig’s assertions about kanji being taught like an impossibly large alphabet with no consistent phonetic value, saying that there must be a more efficient way to learn the characters by relating them to something other than their sounds. In particular, he writes, “….when the character itself is removed, the clear visual memory of the familiar object is precious little help for recalling how to write it.”

Put simply, with the rise of modern personal computers and Japanese-language or Japanese-compatible word processors, recalling how to write the kanji is something I don’t intend to ever focus on. It’s of no great value to know how to write a kanji that you don’t understand.

More to the point, Heisig searches in vain for a kanji alphabet formed of radicals. What radicals are, simplified: they are the building blocks of kanji, and are used to group kanji for the purpose of dictionary searching. THIS is where the rubber hits the road. To use an extremely simple example, the two-stroke part at the left side of this kanji, 代 , is the “radical” or root under which 化, 仇, 仁 and 仏 are listed. For basic purposes, there is no reason to imagine a relationship between these words; it frankly does not matter. Learning alternative methods just makes it harder to use any dictionary that hasn’t sold its soul to Heisig’s system or another alternative system. Like, oh, every Japanese to Japanese dictionary ever written.

More importantly, Heisig is demanding a visual aid to remembering the kanji and declaring that none exists. He has this precisely backwards. The kanji itself is a visual aid. This begs the obvious question: Okay, JB, what is it a visual aid for?

My answer: For a concept.

When I type “ue” into a word processor, my first kanji result is 上. This kanji has a variety of Japanese readings/ pronunciations; in terms of translation, it can mean “above, over, on top of, upper part, summit, surface, higher, in authority, emperor, lord,” and a few others. None of these captures the point of the kanji.

It essentially means “up”.

The idea or concept of “up” is at the root of every single one of those English words. The kanji is a guidepost, a marker, that points the reader to that subset of thought: the meanings have to be something associated with “up”. Even if you’re not sure what, well, that’s what the context is for. At least, that’s how Japanese people work: they grasp what is being referred to by the context of the sentence, with “ue” as a leading indicator of what they should be thinking. They may not even be 100% sure what version of “ue” they ought to be thinking of until the end of the sentence.

But it does mean some semblance of “up”. After all, if someone shouts from beind, “Ue!!!”, that is an urgent warning telling you to look up.

You see, the Japanese do not learn kanji in order to make their own lives miserable. Given that their own native language has numerous variants to play off of the concept of “ue”, seeing the kanji for “ue” in writing allows the reader to peg the idea into a mental compartment for future reference. It allows a person to focus on the rest of the sentence by making that one part crystal clear. Or at least, to so strongly give the gist that the rest turns the gist into precise understanding.

That’s why it will do you no good to learn “ue” (上) on its own. You need to not only learn it; you need to see it in practice, to understand how it is used, because what you are seeing is not a stand-alone, complete word, but an indicator, a guidepost, a marker, a part of an idea. And 上 is the visual reference for that idea. That’s why, when I see 上, I always know that no matter how much I do not yet know about the context, it sure doesn’t mean “shita” (下), which means “down”!

So those are the, ahem, ups and downs of my understanding of how to learn kanji.

Incidentally, putting both of these kanji together as 上下 really can mean (the) ups and downs. This is why I know I had no chance to learn how to translate from Japanese into English without learning compounds. Moreover, learning compounds only aids further in understanding what each of the two kanji individually mean by adding more context. I use a phrase in translation: “Context is King.” I believe that is true of the Japanese language in general.

Learning kanji out of context may not be a worthless exercise, but to me, it is only the starting point. Only learning how to apply the kanji in context can provide a full understanding of even the simplest parts of the language. But, you have to start somewhere.

Having considered this issue at length, I believe that I would teach using both methods in gentle alternation: teach kanji in isolation for a limited period of time, and then gently demonstrate how the kanji are employed in simple, straightforward contexts. It’s easier to remember a visual reference – and kanji are visual references – if you see their meaning and employment from multiple angles.

It’s quite possible that learning kanji as you go is next to impossible without a helpful and knowledgeable teacher, whereas Remembering The Kanji is something that can be done as an individual exercise. However, I simply can’t approve of kanji being treated like a super-alphabet. It’s not quite the same thing. They’re representations of underlying ideas; without grasping the ideas themselves, it’s quite hard to understand what idea someone using kanji is trying to convey.

Forgive the very long post. I don’t know if this would count as a proper article normally but, you answered my call for your thoughts and opinions; nothing less than a full reply would have satisfied me.

Wowies…O_o Now if there’s a website…..

Well it’s blurting out 10+ years of learning experience in one shot. I hadn’t even studied Heisig’s method in detail to compare until now…. I’ll have to look at other methods to see if I think better of them. But good teaching is a good thing any way you slice it….

I detest the Heisig method myself – it’s dull and after time it all gets tangled up in your head.
The workbook I love the most and I always recommend to my students with great results is “Basic Kanji Book” (two parts – 500 kanji) followed by “Intermediate Kanji Book” (also 2 parts). I haven’t gotten my hands on “Advanced Kanji Book” if there are such books, but I cannot recommend BKB and IKB enough.

They work with what I call “Brain Dislocation Syndrome” – remembering partly with your hand not your eyes/brain. Just looking at the kanji, reading texts and flicking through flashcards will help you a lot, but just won’t do in most cases. You have to use your body to active as many connections in your brain as possible.

BKB and IKB have many interesting word-builders, exercises and provides neat worksheets. Why is everybody using Heisig which is more of a dictionary than a textbook? It’s like learning English by reading few pages of some Cambridge or Oxford Dictionary each day. Makes no sense in the long run.

Also, if you are looking for a funnier approach, I remember Koichi-san made a nice worksheet which he even let us translate into Polish.
You’ll find English version here and Polish version here

“Why is everybody using Heisig which is more of a dictionary than a textbook?”

Well, because it works. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with learning from a dictionary instead of a textbook. As long as you’re learning (and you’re not allowed to say you’re not, because there’s plenty of proof against that :P). Maybe it doesn’t work for everyone but I’ve certainly seen it work on a large number of people. I’m also enjoying the book. I like how the structure is broken down and stories are made and I really doubt that any of it will get jumbled later on in the process as long as I continue to keep it organized.

Regardless of what method is used, the important thing is to have fun and just get through with it. All methods are reaching for what is essentially the same result.

By the way…..I’m just a bit over 300 kanji as of today :D.

As long as your leaning is starting with that method, not ending.

I’ll write an article about this. Right now, my only EduFire class is unlikely to get any attendance and I need to do more research/ marketing (at least my free classes proved I have some talent at this) so during that time in an hour or two I’ll be writing up my thoughts, and people will be quite welcome to disagree with it.

I wouldn’t have felt qualified to speak about it at all had I not been through the plains of Gehenna on this issue myself.

Whichever method you use, it’s unrealistic to believe you will remember a kanji after seeing it once. So I go for frequent exposure as the best way to learn.

Sometimes I understand the meaning of a compound and I know how to read the kanjis separately, but I don’t know how to read them together, so I learn that reading. And I’ll forget it. Until it comes up again. After all, it doesn’t come up again, it wasn’t worth learning in the first place.

I have to admit though, I got my basic understanding of kanji from Chinese, at a time when typing Chinese characters wasn’t quite easy yet. And in Chinese, there is no hiragana to use if you feel lazy, you just have to get the character right.

I definitely find that typing Japanese on the computer is not at ALL as efficient as a learning tool as it would be to write them…. but what for? for whom? I’ve still got to deal with that issue….

With the method I’ve talked about above, frequent exposure is taken care of through an SRS such as Anki. It’s basically a really smart set of note cards :). After you’ve been through all of the kanji your job is to collect sentences (small ones!) with words you don’t know and add them to the SRS. Then you have to (given the sentence) be able to read the kanji out loud AND understand the sentence to pass. The second part of this method is supposed to teach grammar and pronunciation (and of course you already know all of the kanji and the hiragana).

Wow! I was gone for a several days and I checked back to all these wonderful and thoughtful replies! Thank you everybody! =))I will definitely use your suggestions. So if I need to learn it in context (since I don’t live in Japan, don’t have much exposure) would it be best to read a book with furigana?

Reading a book with furigana tends to be recommended for starting out, even with a decent amount of exposure. As for exposure to Japanese, the AJATT method basically gives the example of a foreign person moving to another country and never learning their language. They never learn it because despite being surrounded by it, they’re still not really immersed in it. They build a bubble of English (or whatever their native language is) around them; still reading English books, watching English TV, listening to English music, etc. This bubble can easily be replicated (basically, only do things in Japanese). So you can have a Japanese learning bubble around you at all times :).

I’ve probably mentioned this in another thread somewhere but oh well….

I’m a big fan of the Heisig method, i started may 1st this year and I’m currently upto around 1300 out of the 2042 in the first RtK book. The big thing here that I don’t think has been mentioned is that in the AJATT method, while he does state to not do any grammar or sentences during the kanji phase he does state to still be in your own japanese environment as much as possible. What that means, is since may 1st, i’ve been watching japanese dramas, anime, news, variety shows, listening to japanese music, podcasts, and only frequenting a handful of english websites. as i write this i’m listening to RADWIMPS – タユタ….it’s amazing how much i’ve picked up by just reading lyrics, or reading the japanese subtitles in the dramas (i never use any english subtitles when i watch anything).

While I like the idea of being able to recall all these kanji i thought the use of english keywords was a waste of time, the awesome thing is, now, when i see kanji that i learned near the start i don’t usually get the english keyword straight away, infact, to be honest, i rarely get it right, but i just seem to get the gist of the character….and that is what i believe heisig was aiming for in this method. he does state to only test from english keyword to kanji and not the other way round for this reason i think.

(now listenin to RADWIMPS – おしゃかしゃま, love this song, especially this line…馬鹿は死なないと治らない….)

Like I put in the article I wrote about this, http://edufire.com/content/articles/396-why-remembering-the-kanji-is-not-enough-by-itself , it’s all a matter of balance. The system isn’t enough by itself. If you’re combining it with other helpful things, all the more power to you. Just be prepared for an adjustment period – you’re going to have to learn these symbols on different levels to actually use them in real Japanese. But, sounds like you’re a committed learner so best of luck to you. I truly enjoy this language. If it’s fun, you’re on the right track.