Basic Japanese Kanji: High-Frequency Kanji at Your Command!: 1

by Timothy G. Stout, Kaori Hakone

Basic Japanese Kanji, Volume 1 is your introduction to the first 205 of the 410 core characters in Japanese (plus 18 additional kanji that serve as building blocks). These kanji are the most frequently used in newspapers, conversations and the top college-level beginning Japanese textbooks. Using a focused combination of proven traditional methods and unique new methods, this book will help independent learners and university or high school students to write, read, speak and use Japanese better.Software offers exam-quality practiceGives instant feedback/correctionOriginal mnemonics for all 223 kanjiA set of printable kanji flash cards, for on-the-go practice

Genres: Language

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 2011

About the author

Timothy G. Stout, Ph.D., lived in Japan for 20 years, and has taught Japanese language in public and private schools in the United States and Japan for 14 years. While working at the American School in Japan he conducted original research on the use of keyword mnemonics in the instruction of Japanese. Stout has an M.A. in Japanese Pedagogy from Columbia University and a B.A. in Japanese Teaching from Brigham Young University. He currently teaches Japanese at Waterford School in Utah, where he lives with his wife and five children. Stout is the author of Japanese Hiragana for Beginners, Japanese Katakana for Beginners, Tuttle Japanese for Kids Flash Cards, and More Japanese for Kids Flash Cards, all of which are available from Tuttle.

Reviews

[Marija S.]

What I particularly like about this book are short texts every few pages, also kanji / vocabulary quizzes. The featured kanji characters are indeed basic, however going through the said additional content was a fun and useful exercise nevertheless.

Nota bene, there are typos and completely wrong words / characters in some places.

[Arlian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Edit in 2017: I'm going to have to change my original rating from3.5 stars to 1 star. I have kept this book on my shelf. Over the years, when I was bored or had down time or wanted some easy practice, I would occasionally pull it out to practice my reading and writing. I'm a Japanese major, and at this point I can read about 500 kanji, so this book doesn't really teach me anything new, but extra practice never hurts, right? Well, normally that's true, but in this case, I actually this this book sis more detrimental than helpful. There are a ton of typos in this book. I mean, like an insane amount. I'm very surprised and disappointed in Tuttle. Normally, their books are very high quality. This book, however, has so many issues I highly recommend passing on it. Please don't waste your time on a book that is going to end up frustrating and discouraging you. Kanji is hard enough, the books you are using to learn it shouldn't make it harder than necessary.

My original review from 2015:
There are some things this book is great at, and some things it is maybe not so good at. The biggest thing is--I don't actually think this method is the most helpful for learning the Kanji. In case you do not own this book, and instead are looking at reviews to help you decide if you want to purchase it or not, let me explain a little bit about the method used in this book.

Each Kanji is introduced. It shows you a printed version of the Kanji, the "meaning" of the Kanji, the stoke order, then a mnemonic to help you remember the Kanji. For example, with Person/Hito/ひと/人, the mnemonic is "a person walking". After the mnemonic, there is a small area for you to practice writing the Kanji a few times, then some vocabulary is introduced. Sounds all good and helpful, right? Well...did you notice anything missing from this list? If you didn't, I'll point it out--the On and Kun readings. Without the On and Kun readings, you won't fully be able to learn the variety of ways each Kanji is pronounced, so while you may be able to recognize the meanings of the 205 Kanji introduced in this book, your ability to apply that knowledge in your own personal reading will be extremely limited. Remember that Kanji is not always used for it's meaning, but is instead often used only based on its sound (this is called Ateji and is fairly old and advanced in level). I believe the logic behind limiting the On/Kun readings is that many of the On/Kun readings for some of the most basic Kanji are extremely rare and antiquated. I get that! I really do. I think overwhelming a beginner with too many readings can definitely be counter-intuitive and not very helpful at all. However, even if the authors of this book decided they only wanted to introduce a limited number of readings per character, I still think that listing the readings, and identifying which reading they are, is more helpful than simply introducing vocabulary words which display some of the readings.

I already know most/all of the Kanji in this book. I am using this mostly as reading practice, and I think it is *fantastic* for that. This book has SO much reading practice in it--much more than any other self-teaching Kanji book I have found so far. Also, at the end of every lesson there is a lot of writing practice. This book asks you to construct sentences, answer questions, do crossword puzzles, and more. It's a pretty fun way to quiz us on using the Kanji, and it's also a great way to pass time. I've been using this book on my morning commute a lot, as it's a perfect way to kill time on BART. I can't sing the praises of the practice sessions enough.

So, if I feel so positively about the practice sessions, why am I giving this book only 3.5 stars? Well, that leads me to my last point. Typos/mistakes. There are some mistakes in the answer key which is a huge no-no when you are providing a book for self-learning! Get a native speaker to check your answers guys! Want an example? In lesson 1, section G "Most Populous Cities in the World", the population given for Mexico city in the lesson and in the answer section do not match. In the lesson it is 千八百十三万千人　and in the back of the book it is listed as 千八百十三万人. I didn't notice it at first, and instead couldn't figure out why I had gotten the answer for this city wrong, and I kept going over it and going over it again, until I noticed that the two numbers didn't line up. Definitely annoying.

I think this book is pretty good overall but does have a few issues.