Read Japanese Today: The Easy Way to Learn 400 Practical Kanji

by Len Walsh

This is the quickest way to effectively learn written Japanese.

Japanese characters, called kanji, often intimidate potential students of the language with their complex and mysterious appearance. Read Japanese Today is a comprehensible and story–like approach to an often difficult language. Intended for people on the go, this book will teach you to recognize and read the 400 most commonly used Japanese kanji characters. Completely revised and expanded and featuring 25 percent more kanji than previous editions, Read Japanese Today is a fun way to demystify the beautiful Japanese language.

Far from being complex and mysterious, Japanese kanji are actually a simple and fascinating pictographic system, easily understood and readily mastered. With the approach used in this easy–to–read, entertaining book, you'll soon be able to recognize and read more than 400 kanji, whether or not you have any knowledge of Japanese grammar or the spoken language. The kanji characters stick in your mind thanks to an engaging text and illustrations that show how each character developed and what it represents. The description for each kanji explains its origin, its modern meaning, and how it is pronounced. Many examples of everyday usage are included. Read Japanese Today also includes: A brief history of the Japanese writing system. Explanations for how the parts of each kanji are related to the whole. Guidelines for writing Kanji and pronouncing words using them. An introduction to the Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabaries. A complete index to English meanings and a summary table for all of the kanji that are introduced in the book.

Genres: Japanese Literature, Nonfiction, Japan, Language, Reference, Unfinished

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[Ulises · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinarily helpful book for those who have an interest in Japanese writing. Did you know that the character for "east" comes from a pictograph that showed the sun coming out from behind a tree? Things got clearer for me after reading this book.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to read about the etymology of kanji but I really missed some reading practice after each section.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I liked most: that this book provides a different way to memorize the meaning of Chinese characters and the Japanese pronunciations and the book is easily portable.

What I didn’t like: (1) The organization of the material was confusing. Multiple characters appeared in different parts of the book with different meanings and there was no reminder of what the other characters looked like.
(2) The kana was included in the pronunciation but not in the drawings of the characters/words.
(3) There were too many details of what the outdated pictographs were. In some cases I would accidentally write down one of the older versions of the character instead of the modern day one because I thought, after reading a paragraph about it that this character was actually the one I should know...wrong.
(4) I’m not convinced this book contains the most used 400 Kanji. There were some really random words that I don’t use in everyday conversation. I honestly don’t know enough Japanese (or Chinese) to rate the book lower for this but I thought I would share. Who knows, maybe these 400 Kanji are the most used Kanji to make other words.

Overall, no regrets reading this book. I need the practice and honestly, every little bit helps. I will probably read a few more times just to help me memorize the characters and pronunciations. I have other Japanese language books too, to supplement my learning.

[Nancy Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the title is somewhat misleading, the book speaks for itself when it comes to understanding the logic behind kanji. In a way it uses the same principles used in the Heisic method to learn kanji.

Why grill your brain memorizing like a coke ladden parakeet 2610 incoherent scribblings when you can simply understand where the easier kanji drawings come from and then add 1 + 1 to quickly learn harder kanji?

Sure, it's still a titanic feat to memorize all of them, but you'll retain the information a lot easier and you'll even have a lot of fun.

I have actually been to Japan on two occasions and enjoyed spotting different licence plates on the streets and knowing which prefecture they were issued. Yes, this book carries peculiar tidbits of knowledge you would never think of when you visit Japan as a tourist.

One of the handy things that I learned from this book when I visited Japan was to understand how cities divide neighborhoods. Ditch the street name out the door and memorize those ward kanji quickly. They surely came in handy when I traveled by taxi in Kyoto late at night and located my hotel after recognizing the kanji thanks to this booklet.

Does the book cover all of the kanji? No it doesn't. It only covers around the first 200 of them. However if you use it alongside the Heisig books, you could get a useful headstart without feeling overwhelmed. I love to read this book over and over again.

[Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more I study Japanese, the more I realized that the study of the Kanji is often a matter of brute memorization. There are ways to understand how some of the Kanji are built, but many of them seem arbitrarily designed.

This book helps in that it gives logical origins for about 400 Kanji. Whether these origins are derived in a scholarly way, I am not qualified to say. I will say that the mnemonics are very helpful. It is similar to the book Remembering the Kanji, although that book seems more epic.

Whatever helps you assimilate these characters is good. And what this book does is very good.

[Vee · Rating 2 out of 5]

1. I don't recommend this book to help you remember kanji nor the kana.
2. This book will probably not help you read japanese.
This book contains a nice history of some kanji characters. I will review this book while I'm actually learning 2,000+ kanji characters.

Apparently this book did not think an index was necessary. Rolling my eyes.

[Jeff Cromwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this foreign language treasure in a discount book store one day that provided Japanese writing in a beautiful and simple pictographic system. The over 300 characters have a feature set with (1) origin of the graphic, (2) contemporary words connected for understanding, (3) how to speak the graphic, and (4) several examples for application. The Hiragana and Katakana charts with syllabic writing (kana) of two and three separate lines organized by the 5 English vowels, 9 consonants and two single vowel rows provide almost 100 opportunities in the matrix to write and speak each picture. The Chinese characters used with Japanese writing are kanji placed alongside the kana.
The beginning of this mnemonic journey is the star followed by the tree in Tokyo, Japan. A man and woman lived there as well as the family of mother, father and child. Counting all the families was next with descriptions of their life by the river. Discussions of the features of the river followed next with pictures of flowers and woods, fruit and life in the village. Writing at the university in the village had pictures of the love of learning and the development of the self. Transportation and spending money was next with plenty of gates for birds that can organize the week. Animals in the marketplace and the tools to build followed with pictures of colors to add to the descriptive and creative writing. It was a life for a king with a palace, festivals, theater and the changing seasons that completed the origins of this picture book.

Some examples in the book:

口-Kuchi-mouth
電話-Denwa-telephone
日本-Nihon-Japanese
質問-Shitsumon-question
入り口-Iriguchi-entrance
出口-Deguchi-exit
目-Me-eye
耳-Mimi-ear
自己-Jiko-self
人間-Ningen-human
大調和-Dai chōwa- great harmony
食料品-Shokuryōhin - food goods
医療品-Iryō-hin - medical goods
品川-Shinagawa-Shinagawa
詩-Uta-poem
言葉-Kotoba-word
言語-Gengo-language
説明書き-Setsumei kaki-explanation write

At 159 pages of enjoyment for the curious etymologist, it is the kind of book that needs a companion notebook for making cognitive maps to determine how to remember the combinations of 300 pictures with many stories of many words. The unification of the two senses of ear and eye provides the opportunity to place each picture in a sequence of desired length for the page. I highly recommend this book for the personal library to be used as a memory method for Japanese writing and vocabulary formation.

[Edo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best kanji book for beginners and even for intermediate level students of the Japanese language. It doesn't go into much detail about on/kun readings. However, it goes into detail about the real pictographic origin of the kanji and how they evolved to the nonsense (for us non native speakers) characters that we all hate and love.

It only covers 400 kanji out of 2000ish. But those 400 characters might be morphed together to form other kanji.

Once you learn the origin of the shape and traces of the character, it is easier to remember each particular kanji.

Even if you are not a beginner, this book helps you to strengthen your kanji ki or shrakra or cosmos

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty cool & interesting book, although it's not really structured to teaching, it's more like a giant info dump.

[Jared Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

there’s a lot to criticize about this method from a pedagogical point of view, but I feel like it did make me much more comfortable with Kanji

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a serious language text, more a source of amusement in tracing the supposed etymology of some common Japanese/Chinese characters. For instance woman + broom = wife

[Chessyr Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm loving it so far,it doesn't used radicals . I have the first version bought it as a uses book. You need too get one for a begginer like me.

[James Mayday · Rating 3 out of 5]

fun and informative

[Morgan Stach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a good intro to commonly-used kanji, and I appreciated the historical background. Docking a star because I wish the Japanese pronunciations had been written in kana, instead of just romaji.

[Michael Cortes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lem walks you through the origin of many Japanese kanji characters in such a 2ay that you can recognize their meaning. He does it in a fun way so you're never bored.

[Brie Porter · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book unlocked kanji for me in a way that nothing else has. it's fascinating looking into the origins of each symbol. thanks to this book, Japanese is a lot less daunting.

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Идеальная книга по изуч��нию кандзи.
Это не словарь, тут не указан порядок черт, при этом книга лучше других учебников позволяет запоминать иероглифы, а точнее понимать их.

Автор рассказывает о происхождении и эволюции всех базовых иероглифов, помогая построить правильную ассоциацию для лучшего запоминания.

Стоит вернуться к книге через какое-то время.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple first step, learning to read the first 300 Kanji characters; the same way Japanese elementary school students do. It gives topical examples of signage and localities from around Tokyo, so it would be particularly helpful for the first timer language neophyte in Japan. Considering that acquiring just a few thousand Kanji takes most of a High School education, you can't really ask for more in an easy to read book. However with the online Dictionaries which let you look up Kanji by radicals, then having just this basic start lets you progress just as far and fast as you are willing to go. One other factor though is that this book does very little to cover Hiragana and Katakana (Kana)the Japanese (more or less, Lower and Upper Case) phonetic scripts which you also need in order to deal with the many variations of pronunciation and meaning of individual Kanji both singly and in combination (Those little 'Kana' letters beside the Kanji called "Furigana"). In short a simple and easy start but it will still leave you with a long way to go. A good basic dictionary with sections on numbers, dates, respect language, grammar and customs will be an essential further investment.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 4 out of 5]

the title is sort of misleading, but this book really does seem to have some interesting stuff about the composition/etymology of kanji in it

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i've been reading every chapter of this book at least twice, and i'll probably go back over the whole thing eventually. it's hard to get through (unsurprisingly), but even after a few chapters, kanji just don't look the same to me anymore. and i mean this in the best way possible

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finished. this is a really good supplement to learning kanji (especially when it comes to understanding the way they're actually put together), but this is something I'll have to go over again in the future, since there's too much in too small a space to adsorb it in just one read

[Victoria Haf · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is so good, I read it really fast a few years ago and I can still recognize some kanjis when I see them, this makes kanji understanding not only easy but it's also super interesting: understand the history that each ideogram tells us is so beautiful, imagine how different can a person be depending of the way he writes words, it surely affects the way we think

[Flexanimous · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ordinarily I wouldn't add a language study book, but this is not a typical textbook, rather it gives a history of common Kanji (Chinese characters) and how they developed from pictograms. Will it help me to remember the characters? I'm not sure, but this kind of linguistic history is right up my alley.

[Deidre · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a fascinating read and would make me seriously ponder studying Japanese again except it's not terribly practical when living in the USA. However, I might throw practicality to the wind, so strong is the pull after reading the origins of some of the pictographs in this book.

[Bunga Mawar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buku kenangan masa-masa belajar bahasa Jepang. Saat itu saya sampai membuat kartu-kartu kata sesuai panduan buku ini untuk mengingat lebih mudah bentuk2 kanji dari suatu kata Jepang.

Kalau sampai sekarang saya cuma ingat tidak lebih dari 20 kanji, itu salah saya, bukan salah buku ini :)

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

The commentary about the kanjis' origins are interesting, but overall this doesn't provide the "instant" reading ability implied. Still a decent set of vocabulary terms for a starting point or supplementary guide.

[matthew mcdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really nice. Short & reasonably entertaining, even though it's a book on a foreign language.

Goes through a few hundred Kanji (Chinese characters) systematically, outlining their history / explanation / etymology.

[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an easy-read book and going through the Kanji stroke by stroke from the 'beginning' enabled me to learn more than just the characters. I need to read it again just for it to sink in, but having this book with you while you're doing classes will surely help!

[Mum · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is great! easy way to decipher japanese characters.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to remember but really interesting. Between this book and freejapaneselessons.com, I should be able to read a lot of the characters by the time I visit Japan this summer!

[Geoge Ui · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect!

[Tim Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a different edition, anyway back in time I learned a lot from this (though I never really made it to the stage of it's title)