Rating: 
Summary: Not the way to learn
Review: "Remebering Kanji: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters"
is about just that, this book is just to look at the Kanji characters and read some weird ideas the author came up with. It doesn't give the word in Japanese, is just a nice list. Kanji is learned in sentences because different Kanji character meand different things when attached to one another. But I give them two stars for the print they wasted.
Rating: 
Summary: Requires more discipline than most have.
Review: * The mnemonic method Heisig uses is the best way to learn the characters and strokes.* His goal of getting a western adult to equal someone raised within a Chinese/Japanese language setting is both desirable and good. * The book is very hard to use in a classroom setting, particularly considering only the first three hundred radicals are developed enough for consistent testing of anything other than complete understanding. * The amount of self discipline required to succeed with this book is extremely high, and so may not be for you. If you are a personality type that can sit down, read a text book, and do all of the problems at the end of a chapter, then perhaps this is for you. If you are better suited to working through problems in class, then I would recommend a different method.
Rating: 
Summary: A godsend, but only if you're dedicated to seeing it through
Review: As another reviewer noted, you've got to be disciplined to go through this book. Heisig states that with full-time study, you could cover this book in something less than 2 months. Studying part-time (job, kids, and a life), I'm through 1600 kanji at the 3 month mark, and can see the finish line. I've been studying Japanese for 7 years, and can speak fluently. I have tried manifold methods for learning the kanji piecemeal, but have never advanced beyond what a Japanese twelve-year old might know. Upon completion of this book, I'm very confident that I can take this acquired visual memory and run with it to become literate. (Can you hear the chorus of angels in the background?) If you are just getting started in Japanese but want to get beyond the spoken, take a season to go through this book. You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Slow way to reading comprehension
Review: Before you consider using this book, you need to think about why you are learning kanji in the first place. If you're like most learners, you eventually want to learn to read Japanese. The kanji themselves are not useful, they are merely a tool that you will use to read the Japanese words. In my mind, the major failing of this series is an overemphasis on individual kanji and underemphasis on compounds and reading practice. If someone wanted to learn English, would you give them a list of the 2000 most common words and tell them to memorize each one starting from 1 until you hit 2000? I don't think so, yet that is exactly what Heisig wants you to do with this book. You cannot even begin to try reading any Japanese until you finish the entire 1st book and much of the 2nd. You must wade through a number of obscure kanji to find the common ones. Another cornerstone of his system is that you must learn 2000 kanji before any of them are of use (he says this explicitly in his introduction). Frequency counts show that the 500 most common kanji account for 80% of the kanji appearing in newspapers, and 94% can be covered by 1000. These numbers do not hold true for all Japanese writing, but they do show Heisig's claim to be suspect. However, to put this into practice it's not enough to simply know the readings of the kanji and how to write it by hand. You must also know the words that are formed from those kanji. In volume 2, Heisig introduces 1-2 compounds per kanji, as opposed to other books like Kanji in Context which introduce sometimes as many as 15 compounds for one kanji. Anyone who has reached an intermediate or advanced level of Japanese knows that you can make a good attempt at reading actual Japanese even with only 800-1000 kanji, provided you know many compounds for those words and have a good grammatical background. His idea of breaking down the kanji into component parts is a good one, but you do not need his book to do that -- you can break the kanji down yourself. Also, the goal of this book (learning to write the kanji by hand) is questionable. As Heisig himself says in the introduction, many native Japanese speakers cannot write all the kanji by hand. Why should a beginning learner spend a lot of time learning to do something that even educated Japanese are unable to do? With the advent of word processors, the ability to write kanji by hand is not as useful as it once was. My advice is to only use this book as a last resort -- if you are absolutely unable to learn kanji by any other method. Too many people, however, spend their time flipping through kanji flash cards and then lament that they are unable to learn the characters. What you need to try is a book that integrates reading practice with learning the kanji -- something like Basic Kanji Book, Kanji in Context, or Japanese: The Written Language. -Chris
Rating: 
Summary: You learn to read Kanji but not Japanese
Review: Compounds! That's Japanese. Learning individual Kanji is effectively a waste of time because the most important stuff is the compounds of two Kanji. Think if you know 2000 words then you have the vocab of your average 2 year old. It's through combining Kanji that you become proficient and for that you need about 1000-1200 to cover 80-90% of Japanese.
My recommendation is to get very good at the first 600 and their compounds. You'll either have given up by this point or you'll have found many other superior books :)
Rating:
Summary: really useful
Review: For me, the best is studying the basics with JAPANESE IN MANGALAND, practicing writing and so with some good workbook, and learning kanji with REMEMBERING THE KANJI. This book is not for learning japanese, as other have said in their reviews, but fot learning japanese kanji only, so it is normal not being able to read japanese only by studying this book. And it is true that constance is needed. But it is impossible to read japanese without knowing kanji, and it is very difficult to learn kanji with a normal textbook. I kept forgetting strokes and stroke orders, and the reason for it was that I didn't see kanji like a logic system, but more like a more or less difficult drawing. There are many kanji that look nearly the same, but once you study this book, these small differences become impossible to mistake. I am studying this book in spanish, but I've seen in english it's just the same, that's why I am reviewing this kanji study book. :) it has helped me so much...
Rating:
Summary: The single best book for learning the Kanji meanings!
Review: Forget about the traditional way of learning the Kanji like in Japanese school. This book is a must have if you're taking Japanese as a foreign language and you have to learn the characters. Heisig's mnemonic method is amazingly simple: you learn essential elements that are characters in themselves as well as being used to construct more complex characters. What sets this book apart from others is that you learn how to connect the elements using simple stories that stick in your memory. It may sound incredible, but you can really learn the meaning and writing of 20-25 Kanji A DAY with this method and won't be able to forget them. Once you've learned all the Kanji, you're on equal footing with literate Chinese speakers who start to learn Japanese. Studying at UBC and at Nagoya Gakuin, I always wondered why the Chinese were much more fluent in Japanese than the "Westerners" if the languages had nothing in common. Their knowledge of the characters is the answer - you'll find that once you've memorized the Kanji, learning Japanese becomes manageable. The only drawback is that the mnemonic stories provided sometimes only make sense to English native speakers. If French or Spanish is your native language, you should get the respective editions by the same author and a collaborator. Heisig's Kanji flashcards are useful, too, but a bit unwieldy for fast review.
Rating:
Summary: effective, productive, and very true to its title
Review: Having used a number of texts over the years, I found this one to be the best for what it's title describes. It is excellent for learning the meanings and writings of the kanji. It is written in a very down to earth style and makes learning the kanji fun. It quickly gives access to a large number of kanji. Its system is quite simple and before you know it, you have learned 2000 kanji. If I had used this book alongside my first conversation and reading texts, it would have accelerated the entire process of learning to recognize, read, and write kanji. Although it doesn't help one to learn the pronunciation of the kanji or to read compound words, it doesn't claim to do so. After reading this text I found it extremely easy to recall the kanji and put them on paper. So if your goal is_only_reading, then this might not be the book for you. If you intend on improving your overall kanji power, and speeding your progress in kanji, it is very helpful. I don't believe there is one book for everyone and I would not recommend using only this book. Instead, it is an excellent companion to your regular studies. Consider it a multiplier or an enhancer, for it is highly valuable on those terms. I would recommend it to any Western student of the Japanese language.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful teacher via a book
Review: Heisig-sensei has produced a singularly clever book which teaches us to use the time-tested, low-tech gadget we think of last -- the human mind. The first section teaches simple and often downright silly stories that ask the reader to take the English word stimulus and draw the kanji while recalling the elements of the story. Heisig warns NOT to drill the other way around, from the character to the meaning. Recognition of the characters eventually starts to emerge quite naturally. After having mastered the first 500, Heisig starts to cut the reader loose, only giving hints and short outlines of mnemonic stories. In the final section of the book, only the elements, the radicals or primitives as he calls them are introduced and the reader is on his/her own to devise a story that will stick. For those seeking a reference work on kanji, Remembering the Kanji is not intended as one. I picked up an old edition of Hadamitzky and Spahn's Kanji and Kana used here on Amazon.com. There are several excellent kanji "learner's" dictionaries that fill that need very nicely. Thanks entirely to Mr. Heisig, I can now write 2,042 kanji acceptably well (about 95% retention rate presently). The man is a master teacher, able to convey his ideas about harnessing one's own creative powers via a book. I'd like to shake his hand. A comparable master teacher in another discipline is Ms. Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I didn't think I could draw until I met her marvelous teaching via HER book.
Rating:
Summary: "When Westerners Want to Get Serious about Literacy"
Review: I am a European-American who holds an M.A. from a Japanese national university (Hiroshima University) and a Professional Diploma in Foreign Language Education (Japanese) from the University of Hawaii - Manoa. I have lived for some 11 years in Japan as an adult and have taught Japanese at the secondary level in Hawaii and Oregon. Between 2001 and 2003, I assisted Mary Sisk Noguchi, author of the "Kanji Clinic" column in THE JAPAN TIMES, edit, rewrite and check facts in her columns. (The columns may be viewed at www.kanjiclinic.com.) I mention these credentials in order to give potential consumers of Jim Heisig's REMEMBERING THE KANJI, Volume I (aka 'RTK1'), a more informed basis for their impending purchase. Amazon's customer reviews for RTK1 cover a broad spectrum ranging from near-total rejection to devoted acceptance. This is NOT a book that seems to attract many 3-star reviews. As you, the potential consumer of RTK1, debate whether to buy the book or not, I hope my little review will help push you over the edge into the "buy" mentality. I have given this remarkable book a 5-star rating. RTK1 helps level the "kanji playing field." (Incidentally, you can easily discover if this is "THE KANJI BOOK FOR YOU" by going to google.com and inputting "heisig remembering kanji." Dr. Heisig has convenietly made available his well-reasoned, indeed, history-making introduction as well as downloadable stories for the first 250-or-so kanji that he teaches in his system. If you are 'turned on' by his introduction and his first 100 or so stories, then RTK1 is a good tool for you. You will need the book to build a strong memory foundation for the remaining 1750-or-so kanji used in standard written Japanese.) Good luck. This book gives a solid foundation to serious students of written Japanese, and I dare say Chinese, too. Oh, yes, almost forgot. The book is also available in French and Spanish.
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