Review: Kodansha Kanji Dictionary
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
Although my life is dominated by the very latest electronics and my general distain for all things paper-based is infamous; Jack Halpern’s Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary stands out as my must-have kanji learning tool.
Halpern, a serial author, polyglot and 30 year resident of Japan, devised the Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary, which is based on his own world-renowned New Japanese-English Character Dictionary, in response to the need for “an easy-to-use kanji dictionary small enough to be easily carried around yet detailed enough to satisfy the practical needs of serious beginners and intermediate learners.”
The result of his work was a totally new kanji dictionary system that enabled students to “quickly locate the meanings, readings, and compound words for about 98% of the most frequently used kanji.”
SKIP
A large part of its ease of use stems from the use of Halpern’s pioneering SKIP (System of Kanji Indexing by Patterns).
SKIP works by organising kanji based on pattern rather than radical.
The kanji are divided into sections and grouped into four main categories: Left-Right (1), Up-Down (2), Enclosure (3), and Solid (4). A user then counts the number of strokes in each segment, and uses them to determine the kanji’s SKIP number.
Core Meaning
Outside of the obvious benefits of SKIP, my favourite feature is the listing of a core meaning for each kanji. Quite often one kanji can have several different meanings, which can be very confusing for beginners of Japanese.
For example 辞, which is listed in Japanese dictionaries as having the meanings – resign, word, term and expression.
Halpern narrows down the options by highlighting its primary meanings in red below the main kanji listing.
Compounds
One of my favourite ways to learn new kanji is to view them in the context of a compound. Kanji compounds are where two or more kanji join together to form another word.
The resultant word can either be an obvious union of the two meanings or something different altogether.
Halpern lists over 30,000 compounds throughout the Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary, which are invaluable in cementing the primary meaning of the kanji plus pushing your knowledge forward by introducing new words based on the kanji.
Lookup Methods
As noted previously, Kanji are ordered according to their SKIP numbers, which allows any level of student to look up characters with ease.
- The Pattern Index allows characters to be quickly located from their SKIP numbers
- The SCAN Method is a powerful shortcut for locating some characters almost instantly
- The On-Kun Index lists the characters alphabetically by both their on and kun readings
- The Radical Index lists the characters by their traditional radicals
- The Direct Method for locating characters without using any index
What You Get
- 2,230 entry characters, including all the kanji in the Joyo and Jinmei Kanji lists
- 41,000 senses for 31,300 words and word elements show how each character contributes to the meanings of compounds
- 1,200 homophones with core meanings explain differences between closely related characters
- 386 variant forms used in prewar literature and in names
- 1,945 stroke order diagrams show you how to write each kanji stroke by stroke
- 7,200 character readings, including name readings
- Over 2,000 cross-references and five appendixes give instant access to a mass of useful reference data
It Just Feels Good
While aesthetics aren’t usually at the top of the list when it comes to shopping for a dictionary – that’s exactly what is special about the Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary.
Everything just feels good; from the clean layout to the beautiful type-setting and the wafer-thin paper. This is a dictionary that will make searching for kanji a visceral experience.
Recommended
I love this dictionary. I love the way it looks, feels and how it helps take away some of the pain along the path to memorising 2000+ kanji.
It is a dictionary that no beginner or intermediate Japanese student should be without. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary is available from all good book stores.
NB – Please note that this is not an advertisement. I only recommend products that I have bought and used myself.
Nice review, I actually have this dictionary. I’ve had it for about 6 years now, when I first started learning Japanese I was the only one in the class that could look up kanji quickly. Now I mostly use my DS but after finishing the Heisig book I plan to start using the dictionary again to study readings and compounds.
Thx Aaron – glad you liked it ^_^
Nice! I purchased this dictionary a couple of months ago~
Good review, I shall have to pick this up!
I really like this dictionary. Been using it for a couple years to look up stuff and it’s definately a joy to use ^^
Thx hope it helps with your kanji!
I haven’t used this dictionary much, but it looks handy. My flatmate in Japan had one. When I bought the Tuttle version it was for the radicals.
Oh, the cost of opportunity lost!
I’m reading Breaking into Japanese Literature by Giles Murray again, and all of the dictionary entries have reference to the Halpern text. Interoperability issues
BIJL is a great book – fantastic idea to have the Japanese broken down like that on the same page. Hiragana Times does a good job of that too.
Looks beautiful, as far as dictionaries go.
I used the Spahn/Hadamitzky “The Learner’s Kanji Dictionary” to learn most of my kanji. The information in it isn’t as cleanly or as well organized as in the Kodansha dictionary, but it has more complete jukugo lists.
I noticed this dictionary includes “Homophones”, which is pretty cool.
Its on sale and just meets the minimum for free shipping through Amazon. Triple Bonus.
Thank you for the review.
Nice one – you got lucky – hope you enjoy it! ^_^
that thing is in-dispensable; I’ve had it for years and have used it extensively.
Thanks! This will be my next Amazon purchase!
Where can I buy it at?
If you click on the link in the article it will take you to the book at Amazon – thx
Halpern’s dictionaries are pretty awesome, yeah. If you’ve got a Casio EX-Word with SD card support, you can actually buy it in that format!
ahhh I have this one!But I didn’t use it much, I’m pretty confused on how use it
though my sensei taught me how to..sigh.I bought it on impulse.Now that you reviewed it, least I know I bought a good one!Thanks 
I’ve had this dictionary for a few years now. It certainly is good, but I still have to check with the back page when looking something up. That’s just because I don’t often look kanji up, though.
However, I do notice one disadvantage: it uses romaji rather than kana for readings. One advantage of using romaji is of course that, as is done in this book, it’s possible to separate onyomi and kunyomi by capitalising and not capitalising the words. Still, there are needless to say a great number of other solutions to this, many of which allow readings to be displayed in kana.
For people who find Halpern’s KALD handy and inspiring, note that there is an awesome iPod/iPhone version made by Enfour Inc. floating around iTunes (but via off & on appearances only!) Another huge surprise, as good if not better than KALD, is JISHOP ADVANCED (like a wonderful mix btw Halpern’s “Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary” & Spahn/Hadamitzky’s “The Learner’s Kanji Dictionary”). Also worth mentioning for the study of Japanese via the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad: the VERY efficient “Juku” series (mainly Juku Kotoba, Juku Bunpou, Juku Reibun); the superlative “Japanese Sensei Deluxe”; the free “Kotoba”; the HUGE & still-promising “Japanese Flash”, and last but not least the serious “iKIC – Kanji In Context Premium”…