In this article I’ll discuss how I got started learning kanji using the Remembering the Kanji system by James Heisig, and my results after a year of study.

Remembering The Kanji

What is Remembering the kanji?

In Remembering the Kanji (RTK), Heisig describes a method for learning kanji based on breaking each character down into component parts he calls primitives (separate from traditional kanji radicals) and then giving each of them a meaning.

The meaning of each primitive is used to construct a story, otherwise known as a mnemonic, that serves as a memory trigger for the keyword of each kanji.

Read more about Mnemonics →

By having enough parts put together in increasingly fantastical stories, the kanji and its keyword is firmly implanted in your brain.

Note that the primitives of each kanji used in the book are mostly different from the traditional kanji radicals and except for a few instances, the meaning assigned to the primitives has absolutely no relation to what the meaning of that ‘part’ might be as a singular kanji; the sole purpose of these meanings is to aid in constructing stories to learn their composing kanji.

It sounds like a complex system, but after the first hundred kanji or so, it becomes quite intuitive. You really start to ‘get’ it – the kanji begin to unravel from a seemingly random pile of strokes in to something surprisingly simple.

Why I Used It

The way I see it, there’s a scale of Japanese reading ability.

On one end you have absolutely no knowledge of any of the kanji whatsoever; this is where everyone starts.

At the other, there’s a complete understanding of the 2000-3000 most used kanji and their readings. This, along with a solid knowledge of kanji compounds and all of the requisite vocab and grammar, will allow you to reach native fluency.

The goal for me has always been to inch along the scale until my reading ability in Japanese is equivalent to that of my ability in English.

You only need to have been studying Japanese for a while to realize that knowing a few kanji in a sentence or word is not particularly useful.

If you’re reading a sentence and hit a kanji that you don’t know then you stop dead in your tracks. You really need to have an awareness of all the main kanji to read without constantly having to consult a dictionary.

While the Heisig method doesn’t take you to the other end of the scale, it gives you a solid grounding in all of the kanji you’re going to come across in day-to-day life in Japan. In this way, it acts as a very good start.

The goal by the end of the first RTK book (Remembering The Kanji Vol. 1) is familiarity with all the general-use kanji, known as jōyō kanji. If you go in to studying the Heisig method with this mindset, you’ll save yourself a lot of frustration later.

It’s also important to bear in mind that the first round of RTK (Remembering The Kanji Vol. 1) does not teach the readings at all.

So unlike most of you who are probably studying kanji by rote and learning everything about each character at once (readings, stroke order, English meanings etc), in RTK you will be learning just the stroke order, the kanji itself and one English keyword per kanji.

Volume 2 of RTK teaches the readings.

My Version of the Heisig Method

I began simply by reading the first few chapters of RTK and then set up a system of flashcards using a spaced repitition system (SRS), which was well before I had even heard of SRS software such as Anki.

Needless to say this lasted about a week before I lost motivation.

I then discovered a website that focusses solely on the Heisig Method – [Reviewing the Kanji][4]. It provides a free system where you tell it which kanji out of RTK you have studied up to and it gets you to review them at spaced intervals.

If you know the kanji well, it schedules the next review further in to the future. Not so well and it asks you to review it earlier. In this way you work your way through the entire RTK book, focusing on exactly the kanji that you find difficult.

This is a great little site and even better that it is provided as a free service. One of the great features is the ability to share and upvote other people’s mnemonics for each kanji, which keeps the quality of stories usually very high. Of course if you don’t like them you can always add your own.

I would review daily where possible, writing out each kanji that came up as a review. I normally had to do around a hundred reviews a day. Miss a day and this doubles up.

Admittedly, there were some days where I found it difficult to plough through my reviews (I drew the line at 300 in a single day) but I managed to stay on course through the entire book.

I worked through the entire book using the Heisig method and added cards only sporadically, fifty here, a hundred there. Eventually, I was stuck in Japan on a holiday and had a lot of free time on my hands, so I added the final 500 or so over the course of a week. From start to finish, it took me about eight months to add all the joyo kanji to the system.

The Results: One Year Later

I know for a fact that I can write every single one of the jōyō kanji. I no longer use the Review the Kanji website so it’s quite possible that my recognition is getting a little rusty, however there is one huge, life-altering difference between the way I am now and the way I was before studying kanji via the Heisig method.

I now have a vague sense of security in my kanji ability. Given an unfamiliar kanji, I probably know three or four that look something like it, form compound words with them, share radicals and probably readings etc. They are now a known entity, not some alien language and I feel a lot more comfortable when confronted with them than I did before.

Importantly, I still cannot read the vast majority of written Japanese text. There are other methods to achieve that goal, and it wasn’t something I was aiming of achieving entirely through the Heisig method.

What I got instead was confidence. This is something that’s is lacking when you first start out with kanji. At that stage, all you know is that they’re hard, there’s a lot of them, and it’s going to be a long and winding road before you’re even a little bit good.

After studying with the Heisig method though, I have a better understanding of the problem. I know I need to read lots of examples, see the kanji in a lot of different contexts and start practicing with real Japanese text.

The point is that after working through the book, you know it can be done. This alone was invaluable for me, and I recommend the RTK method to anyone who is seriously interested in learning to read Japanese.

More Reading

• Remembering The Kanji – Volume 1 →
• Download a pdf sample of Remembering The Kanji – Volume 1 →
• Japanese Mnemonic Blog →

I’m Ali, a software developer based in London, UK. I went to Japan for two years teaching English, and am currently planning my escape back to the promised land. In the meantime I write about studying Japanese at the Japanalicious blog.

• Learning Japanese: Do It Your Own Way
• Review: My Top 5 Kanji iPhone Apps
• JLPT versus RTK: It’s Your Choice
• Learn Kanji: The Kanji Starter Kit
• Book Review: Jimi’s Book Of Japanese

Personally I find the mnemonic style of the RTK system more in line with how I learn and subsequently retain information but I also began my Japanese learning with JLPT so I know both sides of the story.

If you’re new to Japanese or have just moved up from learning Katakana and Hiragana then you might be wondering what exactly is RTK and JLPT?

RTK

RTK or Remembering The Kanji was a system developed by James Heisig in the mid-1970′s as an alternative to the rote learning style that was common in most methods of teaching Japanese at the time.

RTK focuses on the meaning of the individual smaller parts that make up each kanji, which can be the traditional radicals or other parts and groupings of strokes unique to the RTK method.

Each kanji (or part of the kanji) is assigned a story, otherwise known as a mnemonic, that the student can use to help recall the kanji meaning. RTK forgoes learning the kanji readings (on and kun) until after the meanings and written forms of all kanji are fully mastered.

This is not a learning style that will work for everyone but if you’re a visual learner, and you’ll know if you are, then this may be just the thing you need to speed up your Japanese learning.

JLPT

JLPT, known officially as the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, is a standard way to test the Japanese language for non-Japanese students and has been used worldwide since its introduction in 1984.

Following a major overhaul in 2010, JLPT now has 5 levels (N1-N5) and each of those contain a certain number of kanji (plus grammar and vocabulary) that must be mastered for a pass at that level.

It’s approach is polar opposite to RTK as its focus is all about the kanji meanings as well as the readings. Very little, if anything, is mentioned about radicals or smaller parts of the kanji, which are so much a part of RTK.

Both methods fully cover the Joyo kanji, which now numbers 2136, and will give you the knowledge to be able to decipher the meanings of most everyday kanji.

By the way, it is worth mentioning that only the JLPT method has an official testing system. So if you’re looking to earn a certificate to use for employment in a field that requires a certain level of Japanese then JLPT is one of your only choices.

Please note that if you really know your kanji (plus the grammar and vocab), then you won’t have any problem passing a JLPT exam ^_^

Want to find out more about either method? I’ve listed below some of the more popular sites covering each system.

RTK and Mnemonic-based Links

• Reviewing The Kanji
  Great website for user uploaded mnemonics and general kanji study
• Remembering The Kanji – Volume 1
  The most popular of the series (I own and recommend)
• Japanese Mnemonic Blog
  No longer active but tons of great articles
• Kana Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese
  Kana Mnemonics (I own and recommend)
• Kanji Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese
  Kanji Mnemonics (I own and recommend)
• RTK on Wikipedia

JLPT Links

• JLPT Study
  Detailed website covering all levels of the JLPT
• Official JLPT Website
• JLPT on Wikipedia

• Remembering the Kanji: One Year Later
• Mnemonics: Learn Japanese Faster
• Book Review: Tokyo On Foot
• Historic Japan: The World of Albert Kahn
• Canon debuts ground-breaking EOS 7D

In terms of similar kanji, 氷 (icicle) and 永 (eternity) are very close. They’re clearly not indistinguishable but at normal reading size they can be difficult to tell apart especially for beginners.

If we threw in 水 to the mix, which is the kanji for water, we could thoroughly confuse ourselves – so I think we’ll just stick with these two for today. ^_^

My mnemonic (visual clue) for keeping these two kanji clear in my mind is to visualise that “If you snap the tip off the icicle (氷), it will be broken for an eternity (永)”.

The icicle kanji – 氷 – has the straight up tip with the small stroke to the left while the kanji for Eternity – 永 – looks like someone has snapped the top and pushed it to the left.

Remember that as crazy as some of these mnemonics sound, they really work.

Example Usage

Readings

氷 (On: ヒョウ Kun: こおり, ひ, こおる)

永 (On: エイ Kun: ながい)

• Word Of The Week: Choushoku (朝食)
• Japan Vocab: Weather Words
• Similar Kanji: Taste vs Wisdom
• Similar Kanji: Eye vs Oneself
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo

目 (eye) and 自 (oneself) are separated by just one small stroke and as such prove to be tricky for beginners to remember. Both kanji are part of the JLPT3 and are taught in grade one and two at Japanese schools respectively.

My visual clue (or mnemonic) for remembering the kanji for eye (目) is to imagine an “eye” looking through open wooden blinds – the blinds being represented by the horizontal lines in the kanji.

So the horizontal lines in 目 are the wooden parts of the blind going across your window and you use one “eye” to look out through them.

For oneself (自) I imagine the top vertical stroke as a hand that is stuck up in the air when you are asked to identify yourself. So if you are in class and the teacher calls out your name and you stick your hand in the air, then your are identifying yourself or “oneself”.

Remember that as crazy as some of these mnemonics sound, they really work.

Example Usage

• Similar Kanji: White vs Day
• Similar Kanji: Person vs Enter
• Similar Kanji: Special, Wait and Hold
• Similar Kanji: Icicle vs Eternity
• Similar Kanji: Compare and North

However, the simple reality is that the way everyone learns and retains information is different.

Over a long period of trial and error, I came to the conclusion that mnemonics work very well for me. I seem to learn faster and retain information for longer as long as it is attached to some sort of story that makes sense to me. I don’t need this for everything, just some areas of my life. Thankfully I can remember things like my wife’s name without any help ^_^

Unfortunately many language students don’t get any choice about the way they are taught.

A majority of students sit in a classroom at a desk and make their way through a textbook with the help of a teacher, just as they did 100 years ago. This one-size-fits-all mentality suits some but others run the risk of blaming themselves for not learning quick enough.

So if you’re struggling to learn Japanese then perhaps mnemonics are the answer for you.

What Are Mnemonics?

A mnemonic device is a mind memory and/or learning aid. Commonly, mnemonics are verbal – such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something – but may be visual, kinaesthetic or auditory. Mnemonics rely on associations between easy-to-remember constructs which can be related back to the data that is to be remembered. This is based on the principle that the human mind much more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, sexual or humorous or otherwise meaningful information than arbitrary sequences – Wikipedia

Basically all that means is that a mnemonic device is a way of associating a word, picture or phrase to the item you are trying to learn.

You have most likely heard of the phrase – “I” before “E”, except after “C”.

When you correctly write “receive” rather than “recieve” or “believe” rather than “beleive” you might be subconsciously using that rule.

Another popular example is memorising the order of the planets from the sun.

This isn’t something you’ll likely need to know until the next trivia night at your local pub, however, the simple phrase – “My Very Easy Memory Jingle Seems Useful Naming Planets” allows you to reel off – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto – with ease.

The first letter of each planet corresponds to the first letters in the phrase and the key word at the end is the word “planets” so it’s dead easy for your brain to associate and therefore remember the two. Despite never having to name the planets in the proper order since leaving school, I can still rattle them off using that mnemonic device.

So now we know what mnemonics are, let’s look at how they help you to learn Japanese.

From Paper to Brain

In the kana examples above from the White Rabbit Press Kana Flashcards, we see に being represented as a human “knee” and チ as a person tilted sideways holding a flag and “chi-ring” or “cheering”.

In the first flashcard image the hiragana “に” is represented with a picture of a human “knee”. Immediately I can associate the two images in my mind (ni and knee) and with very little effort it is stored away permanently for later use.

The thought process goes something like this:

• Read に
• Ah yes, I remember that に looks like a human knee
• Knee sounds like ni
• Hmmm I’d love a Coke
• Okay back to the Japanese
• This must be the hiragana に (ni)

All of that happens in a split second of course but you get the idea.

As time goes on, the gap between seeing に and trying to identify what it is, shortens to just knowing that に is に. It’s exactly the same way we process information in our native languages – there is essentially no thought process, it’s just automatic. It still takes time and lots of practice but it works.

Remembering The Kanji

Perhaps the best known exponent of mnemonics when it comes to learning Japanese is from James Heisig, the author of the “Remembering The Kanji” series.

Heisig turned the Japanese language learning community on its head when he debuted his method of learning the kanji, which threw out the common rote learning model and replaced it with a concept that pairs a keyword to a kanji and then associates a short story to that kanji to aid in memorising its meaning.

His radical approach also removed the readings from the learning of the kanji and simply focussed on meaning and stroke order. This process has its critics but I tend to agree with the general philosophy. Having said that, I am not sure any method is “better” than each other – it again depends on what works best for you.

Confused? Let me explain with an example.

The kanji for “rising sun” is 旭 and Heisig’s mnemonic device is:

This character is a sort of nickname for the Japanese flag with its well-known emblem of the rising sun. If you can picture two seams running down that great red sun, and then imagine it sitting on a baseball bat for a flagpole, you have a slightly irreverent—but not altogether inaccurate—picture of how the sport has caught on in the Land of the Rising Sun.

On this occasion, Heisig’s mnemonic didn’t really work that well for me so I came up with one of my own.

Imagine a forklift on the left with its fork outstretched and lifting a “sun” kanji, which in turn equates to raising or “rising sun”.

That process may seem totally convoluted to some or ridiculous, and perhaps, childish to others but in the end if it works and you end up being fluent in Japanese then who cares what it takes to get you there – silly or not.

Where To From Here?

If you’re happy with the results you get from your current study patterns then there’s probably no need to think of another method.

However, if you’ve been staring at your hiragana or kanji worksheets for months on end and nothing is sticking or you’re lagging behind in class, then mnemonics may be the answer.

In the end, it’s 100% up to you to learn and your own motivation (or lack there of) is what will kill your chances of learning before any particular method will.

It’s important to note that this article is not all about Heisig’s method – you can create whatever mnemonics you like. Use whatever works for you.

Here’s a few mnemonic-based links to get you started. Best of luck with your studies.

• Reviewing The Kanji
  Great website for user uploaded mnemonics and general kanji study
• Remembering The Kanji – Volume 1
  The most popular of the series (I own and recommend)
• Japanese Mnemonic Blog
  No longer active but tons of great articles
• Kana Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese
  Kana Mnemonics (I own and recommend)
• Kanji Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese
  Kanji Mnemonics (I own and recommend)

Disclosure: I get paid a (very) small amount if you purchase any of the books above at Amazon from these links. Just wanted to be upfront with you – thanks for reading ^_^

• JLPT versus RTK: It’s Your Choice
• Remembering the Kanji: One Year Later
• Similar Kanji: Compare and North
• Similar Kanji: Special, Wait and Hold
• Similar Kanji: Eye vs Oneself

• 人 – Person
• 入 – Enter, insert

人 (Person) and 入 (Enter) are both JLPT4/N5 and learnt in Grade 1 in Japanese schools, however for a beginner, they can be very easily mixed up.

The only visual difference between the two is the small stroke at the top of 入 (enter), which is what I use to create a story in my mind to remember the two.

However, the line at the top is not an actual stroke (both are two stroke kanji) so you may see 入 without the line when it is hand-written or in different printed fonts out in the wild when you’re next travelling around Japan.

The example image above is a very common use of the “Enter” kanji, which you will see everywhere in Japan as it means Entrance (入 – Enter, 口 – Mouth, Opening). Thanks to kejhu for image.

So how do I differentiate the two when there is no extra line at the top? The kanji for 人 (Person) tends to lean to the right and 入 (Enter) seems to lean to the left.

I learnt 人 (person) first and used the obvious similarity to a person standing with their legs apart to remember it, which has served me well. Once you get a few kanji under your belt these early ones seem like a breeze. Really ^_^

So to remember 入 (enter) I visualise a very tall person “entering” through a doorway with his head bent slightly forward (the stroke at the top of the kanji). If you really want to stretch your imagination the kanji also resembles an old fashioned key, with your hand holding the end (the shape of a V) and “inserting” the key in to a door allows you to “enter”.

Mnemonics don’t work for everyone but they work very well for me and hopefully you.

• Similar Kanji: White vs Day
• Similar Kanji: Special, Wait and Hold
• Similar Kanji: Compare and North
• Similar Kanji: Eye vs Oneself
• Similar Kanji: Noon vs Cow

In today’s Similar Kanji series we look at – 午 (noon) versus 牛 (cow).

• 午 – Noon, seventh sign of Chinese zodiac, sign of the horse
• 牛 – Cow

I have no special memory ideas for 午 (noon), it’s just one of the kanji I learnt early on as part of JLPT4 and found quite easy to lock away somewhere in my brain.

Some suggest remembering the head of a horse as the kanji relates to the sign of the horse in the zodiac but that never worked for me – you may get more mileage perhaps.

However, it was 牛 (cow) that always had me confused and I constantly got it wrong as the only real difference between the two is the slight vertical line at the top of the kanji (牛).

My advice to separate the two in your mind is to imagine that the line at the top of 牛 (cow) is the horn of a bull, which is similar enough to a cow to trigger the memory.

As soon as I used that idea it was very easy to separate the two in my head and I moved on to the next 1943 kanji to memorise!

• Look-alike Kanji for Beginners
• Similar Kanji: Taste vs Wisdom
• Similar Kanji: Person vs Enter
• Similar Kanji: White vs Day
• Similar Kanji: Eye vs Oneself

While these kanji (味 – Flavour, taste and 知 – Know, wisdom) are less alike than some of my previous examples in this series, they still can provide some confusion at the JLPT 3rd and 4th levels with the same basic box on the side and a similar looking object on the side.

If you see these kanji in various textbooks be aware that they can look very different depending on the font style used to display them.

知 is clarified in my memory by visualising the left half as a person with a hat, arms and legs holding out his arm to get a book from a shelf (the box on the right), perhaps in a library or bookstore. This ties back nicely to growing your knowledge or “wisdom” by reading books.

To memorise 味 I break it down into two parts – the long rectangle on the left that looks like an outstretched tongue and the kanji on the right – 未 – that kanji on its own means “not yet”. So the memory trigger is that the character on the right has “not yet” come in to contact with the “tongue” on the left to be able to “taste” the “flavour”.

As I alluded to earlier, when you see these kanji written in a more traditional way (calligraphy), the long thin boxes on either side can look more like a square box, which may negate the “tongue” memory idea above. However, as with the English alphabet, once you have mastered these your brain can deal with the slight variations you will find between written styles.

There are several other kanji (和 – harmony, 咲 – blossom) that look similar to 味 and 知 but they’re both part of JLPT 2 and if you’re reading this you’re probably a long way from that level yet!

Visual memory triggers, called mnemonics, work well for me but it’s just one way of memorising kanji – use whatever works for you. If you’re keen to explore mnemonics further then I suggest a visit to the excellent Reviewing The Kanji website.

Example Usage

• Similar Kanji: Noon vs Cow
• Look-alike Kanji for Beginners
• Similar Kanji: Icicle vs Eternity
• Similar Kanji: Compare and North
• Have Fun With Kanji Reps

Visually 日 (day) and 白 (white) are differentiated by just a small stroke at the top of 白. Both kanji are part of JLPT 4 and are learnt in grade one in Japan.

日 (Day, Sun, Counter for days) is possibly one of the first kanji you will see and/or learn as it forms the first part of the word “nihon” (日 – ni, 本 – hon) meaning Japan and is also officially ranked as the most used kanji in Japanese newspapers.

My visual trigger to remember the meaning of 日 is that I imagine the kanji represents a “day” that is split up in to two parts or boxes and I use that to refer to the two parts of the “day” – AM and PM. You can also imagine it as it’s other meaning, “sun” (top of the box) rising over the horizon (bottom of the box).

To memorise “white” (白) I use the short stroke at the top to visualise as an arm on top of a body (the two boxes) holding a “white” flag and surrendering. To not confuse this with “oneself” (自), which has three “parts”, I think of the body holding the “white” flag as having two halves – the waist up and then waist down

Over time (and with lots of study) you will remember these easier JLPT4 kanji without the need for any special triggers as you don’t have another 1500 kanji in your head at that point to confuse things (^_^). If either of these kanji are not sticking in your memory somewhere then hopefully the memory triggers above can help.

Examples

• Similar Kanji: Taste vs Wisdom
• Similar Kanji: Eye vs Oneself
• Similar Kanji: Person vs Enter
• Similar Kanji: Compare and North
• Learn Kanji: The Kanji Starter Kit