Rating: 
Summary: This book is useless
Review: I am sorry I ever bought this book without reading the negative reviews. It seemed like a good idea to base learning kanji on mnemonics. It definitely help to associate mental images with the whole kanji or elements of characters, which Heisig calls "primitives"; however, after trying to stomach the ridiculous as well as sexist anecdotes which are supposed to give you a foolproof recollection of the kanji, I realized I was going nowhere.
The last straw for me was the need to make or buy hundreds of flashcards. This is no way to learn kanji.
Rating: 
Summary: This book worked well for me. Maybe it will work for you.
Review: I can't, of course, give any guidance on what will work for other people; I can only tell you what worked for me. I went to work as a scientist in Japan for Japanese organizations (NEC and MITI). I had a very strong motivation to learn how to read technical Japanese very rapidly. I used an earlier edition of Heisig's book and learned the ~2000 general-use characters in thirteen weeks and was able to easily read technical literature at the end of six months (I spent about three months learning technical vocabulary). At the end of a year, I gave a technical talk in Japanese at a professional society meeting in Nagaoka, and read my talk from its kanji text in real-time.I know others who had less success with this book. They were generally less motivated to learn Japanese and generally did so at a glacial pace, if at all. This book was not a replacement for thought or effort, but ensured that my efforts were expended usefully. If you would sooner have limbs fall off than fail at the task of learning Japanese, I recommend this book to you.
Rating: 
Summary: Basic idea is okay, but book is practically useless
Review: I give this book 2 stars in gratitude for turning me on to the idea of using kanji's constituent points to make one's own personal mnemonic narratives. This works for me and a lot of people. However, learning the "meaning" without learning the readings or pronunciation is really only of interest to people who have a sort of abstract interest in _knowing about_ (as opposed to being able to use) an "exotic" language like Japanese. The truth is, there is no easy solution to kanji. You just have to buckle down and learn them. And for that, I would recommend Bruce Henshall's _A guide to remembering Japanese characters_ over this book any day. For one thing, the mnemonics Henshall offers are actually based on the real, historical derivations of the kanji. Heisig's are not always so based. For another, you get the various readings of the kanji and some sample compounds for each kanji. I wish he included stroke order for each kanji (since even if you know "the rules" it's not always transparent how to write them), but since if you're serious you'll have a good kanji dictionary anyway you can use that if you need to. In choosing which kanji to learn you could go in order of appearance in this book, or at later stages you can look up words as you encounter them. Check out Henshall's mnemonic, make it into something meaningful to you, and then put it into your memory system. You NEED a system or your lost. I use Supermemo (a fantastic and cheap program that will come up if you search for it on the net) on my PDA now, but I used to do it on my desktop. It's a better, more efficient version of flashcards. Other people use flashcards which of course works but is a bit ponderous, hard to keep organized, and time consuming since you will review a lot of cards you don't need to. Then you've got to stick with it. 10 minutes every day is better than an hour on Saturday, BY FAR. Read the memory research and you will see that this is a well-supported finding. I like to set myself periodic goals and go from there. The first year I studied Japanese (when kanji weren't as immediately important), it was to learn the 100 kanji necessary to pass level 4 of the Japanese proficiency test. The next year it was to learn the 300 or so necessary for the next level, and so on. Words of encouragement: The first 100 were by far the most difficult for me. If you stick with it, you'll find your brain gets adapted to learning this sort of information and you will start to be able to learn fairly large amounts of kanji much more quickly than you could've at first. It's also very mentally satisfying. I have a theory that it adds to our visual intelligence (see Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences). It's also a kick when you discover the kanji for a word that you've sort of known and you go, "Oh, that's where it comes from!" Good luck. It's a long haul and not for the faint-hearted, but the journey does get really fun and interesting in itself after a while. You probably lessen your chances of getting Alzheimer's by studying kanji, too :-)
Rating:
Summary: I tried the traditional way. This is MUCH easier
Review: I have been trying to memorize Kanji off-and-on for the last 4-5 months. I would say that I remember 150 Kanji with confidence (and many more have entered my mind and then floated away). The mnemonics in this book have let me learn 70 Kanji over a three day span of time, with much less stress, and in a way that I think will stick with me much longer than the usual method has. With due respect to the caveats of other reviewers in terms of the lack of pronounciation and compound word guides (and remembering that this is the first of 3 books, the next of which seem to address these issues) I think this is an extremely valuable book. I have found with those kanji that I learned the old way, the pronuciation and sense of the actual word come quickly to me once I remember what the kanji "means". That connection is what this books gives me. I had hoped to eventually have first 1000 or so kanji under my belt. This book, it seems, will let me do that and more in a matter of months instead of years. I'm very excited :o) .
Rating: 
Summary: Tops for speakers
Review: I think the diverging views here come from people who are studying textbook Japanese, and those who have learned the language orally, and have never come to grips with the kanji. I come from the latter category, and books like this really do help. At my level of Japanese, if I know the meaning, I can quickly recognize the reading from my spoken vocabulary. Since all languages learned as a mother tongue are transmitted orally, this kind of book (since it is a book) SHOULD concentrate on the meanings of kanji, not the reading (which would be a somewhat gruesome task anyways). For non-native speakers, English reading and writing takes a year or two to grasp, but comprehension (which sits high on my list for communicating effectively) takes years. That's why this book is a great shortcut for some of us. It's not always necessary to have compounds, readings and historical allegories. Personally, I would rather understand what is written than simply be able to read the words like an idiot savant.
Rating:
Summary: Works for me
Review: I'll have to admit right now that I haven't finished the book yet, but I am plowing through it little by little (I have a nasty lazy streak). However, as I am currently living in Japan I have found the little that I have learned to be invaluable. Although he does not teach pronunication in this book, I can understand the general gist of signs and such, which makes life here much more pleasurable than when I first got here. Also, my new hobby on long train rides is to read the stops in Kanji and learn the pronunciations from the romaji posted or from the conductor's voice. His methodology is fairly easy to use, except that he does use some obscure english words and word pictures as definitions for the kanjis. So in that sense it can turn off the user when you have to pick up a dictionary to figure of the definition of the english definition that he taught you. I suppose that will be a good way to pick up additional ENGLISH vocabulary though. Anyway, I am pleased with my progress. I find that I can pick up about 10-15 kanjis a day reliably, though my study times aren't that consistent. Right now, I'm about half way through and confident that I will eventually be literate in Japanese. If you have trouble learning Kanji the traditional way, try this method. It may work for you too.
Rating:
Summary: Will give back what you're willing to put in
Review: I'm 18 years old, and I've graduated slightly earlier due to homeschooling. This evening I finished this book, the first in a series of three books designed to make me literate in the 2,000+ symbols used everyday in Japanese society. After seeing the results of the first book, I truly feel that I am on my way to Japanese literacy.
If you've read one of the many reviews, you probably understand that this book doesn't teach you a single pronunciation of a Japanese character, but rather you tag an English keyword on to all of the Japanese symbols treated in this book, leaving the pronunciation for later.
Why do this? If you aren't noticing quick results in your Japanese abilities, what's the point in learning it? It's true that every single word I've learned will be of no immediate benefit to me if I try to pick up a Japanese newspaper, article, etc. and try to read it. Many have the misconception that in order to "master" the Japanese written language, one must study and "master" the characters individually, and over a period of time, accumulate lots of characters in one's lexicon, therefore allowing the student to read lots of stuff (Makes sense, right?). But our minds don't think like that. (Assuming everybody reading this review is a native to a Roman character based alphabet, or something pretty close to this) We are not used to recognizing little squiggly lines, let alone understanding a concept and multiple pronunciations simply by looking at them. Yet each and every Japanese textbook you'll find on the market supports the idea of mastering each character individually, a method that might seem to be the ONLY method to bring immediate benefits, but requires lots of work and constant drilling of a character. This method is deemed (By the author) to be ineffective and a waste of time.
So what does this book do for our situation? Rather than assuming that we can make the connection between a jumble of lines and the meaning of a character (Which every text book somehow assumes we can do), the kanji are broken down into smaller fragments, and each are tagged with a word that represents an idea, concept, thing, etc., that we are familiar with, such as a hill, the sun, or a baseball bat. Adding these various building blocks together, you form new concepts, and in turn, new characters. True, most these "building blocks" probably don't have a relationship whatsoever with any sort of root meaning, but this isn't the point. The point is to take something you aren't familiar with (Lots of lines), and to make them familiar to you (An image, a picture in your mind). Using these familiar images, you guide yourself from the tagged English word to the Kanji (Or the other way around). No, you will not be able to pronounce any of them when you're finished with this book. But you will be able to identify and tell the difference between even the smallest of nuances. You will look at kanji in a completely different way.
I can't speak for others, but progressing through this course to it's completion was perhaps one of the toughest tests of self-discipline and concentration that I've done in my life. You don't simply "hop along for the ride" to understanding kanji. You will tread through this sea of characters until you've used up every bit of strength your imagination can muster. The only people I've talked to in real life (Not via e-mail) that have attempted this course have either not yet completed it, or have given up with it altogether. This isn't a "learn Japanese kanji in 4 minutes a day" sort-of course. This is a massive undertaking, and must be treated as such, lest the student fizzle out, like so many seem to have done. This is not a book for someone that wants to "get their feet wet" in the sea of kanji. Rather, it is for the serious student, one that is willing to make a commitment (And a big one, at that) towards literacy in Japanese. If this isn't your goal, then I suggest you find another book.
Before you stands a course that requires great stamina, determination and willpower to accomplish. The benefits might not sound like much, but by the time you've finished this course, you'll be on a new plateau of kanji understanding, one that can lead you to literacy. If you "Google" the words "James Heisig Kanji," you'll be able to find a "demo" of the first couple hundred kanji covered in the book. Give it a try. And depending on how much you're willing to work at it, you've either found for yourself a precious gem or another useless rock.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing book, amazing author!
Review: I'm a bit past 1/3 the way through this book, and I am already totally amazed. In about 9 months, spending very little time each day, I've so far memorized about 800 kanji. My study of the Japanese language started in earnest about a year ago, when I learned the hiragana and katakana (using Heisig's other book, "Remembering the hiragana/katakana"). That went so well that I decided to buy this book and give it a try. I figured, "2100 kanji?! There's no way I'll ever remember them!" But I thought it would be worth giving it a try. Thanks to this book, I continue to amaze myself everyday with the ease with which I can remember how to read and write so many hundreds of kanji. This book teaches absolutely nothing about the pronunciation of the kanji. That's left for later texts (I believe it's covered in Heisig's second volume, but I'm not sure). While studying this book, you will learn the primary meaning (key word), along with the correct method for writing, each of the 2100 or so Jouyou (basic) kanji. James Heisig has come up with not just a great method for memorizing the way to write the kanji, but also what I've found to be the perfect order for a native English-speaker to memorize them in. You don't learn them in the same order that a Japanese kid would, and that makes sense (unless you happen to be a Japanese kid). You start off learning little bits of pictographs (called 'primitives'), you learn basically what those primitives mean (in the etymological history, more or less), and then you put these primitives together, while making a little story about how those primitives come together to represent the key word. And I tell you, it really works. Even if you're not interested in mastering the Japanese language, it wouldn't hurt to run your brain through the exercise of reading this book. It helps a lot if you can study just 5 to 10 minutes a day, but even if you can't (and I often go for days, sometimes weeks, without practicing) you'll find that you can still remember everything after just a little bit of practice. I started out using Heisig's flash cards (sold separately), and they're great. They even include pronunciations for all the kanji. The downside is that there are over 2000 of these cards! How do you shuffle or meaningfully use 2000 cards? I don't know. So I've pretty much stopped using them, and I've put all the keywords and kanji pictures into an MSExcel spreadsheet, and I can shuffle and practice them that way. I still use the cards to practice the latest 20 or so kanji I've learned, but you'll need to come up with some method for practicing all of them every once in awhile. Even a random number generator, along with a printed list of the keywords, would work in a pinch. Basically, this book, plus a good dose of your concentration and just a bit of your time, will have you reading and writing kanji even if you never thought it would be possible.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing system, but depends on what you want to learn
Review: I've been using Heisig's book for about 7 weeks, and have "learned" 310 kanji during that time. I wanted to share some of my experiences and thoughts to add to the other thoughtful reviews.
First, by way of background, I experienced the "traditional" method of learning kanji when I studied Chinese a number of years ago. As Heisig notes in his introduction, that method involves learning characters in order according to how fundamental they are in language, and one learns the written character, pronunciation, grammatical details, and so forth simultaneously. The characters are learned purely by rote, and the pictorial aspects are not tied to anything systematic. My experience agreed with Heisig's notes: with nothing to anchor one's memory, it is nearly impossible to remember how to write the characters. I spent many hours a day practicing the characters to little avail and much frustration, and ultimately abandoned learning Chinese because I could not find the time to persist in that method.
When I decided to learn Japanese, the fear of chinese characters returned. How could I learn kanji when Chinese characters were an insurmountable obstacle in the past? Luckily, Heisig's book has been part of the answer. The key is that, instead of merely learning random markings, he lays out a system in which one uses imaginative associations. And, yes, it really works (at least for me). It is not difficult to "learn" 20-30 kanji per day, given an available hour or two of time.
Now, a few things have to be said. First, in his system, to "learn" a kanji means simply to learn two things: (1) how to write it; (2) a single key meaning. There are many other things that one does not learn (in volume 1 of his system): (3) pronunciation (that's in volume 2); (4) alternative meanings, which are multiple for most kanji; (5) compounds with other kanji; (6) anything about usage or grammar. That is by design, as Heisig notes that learning to write the kanji is the most important barrier for westerners. He specifically designed the system to lower that hurdle as low as it can be, and that meant that the other aspects of kanji are postponed.
The value of this system depends on one's goals, schedule, and related activity. First, Heisig notes that his system should be completely separated from any other simultaneous activity to learn kanji. It is NOT intended to be a supplement to a second or third year Japanese course, for instance. Further, it is not designed to progress from common to less-common, like many kanji books. Rather, it bunches kanji together solely on the basis of how easy they are to learn together. This implies that the course must be completed -- or very nearly completed -- to get most of the benefit. That implies a certain schedule, namely, to persist until one is done.
In terms of goals, the system works well for some goals: (a) learning to write the basic kanji in a short amount of time, so one can devote study to grammar and other matters; (b) rapidly developing an extremely rudimentary reading ability, where "reading" means "occasionally figuring out a few words, but mostly just being able to have some visual memory for kanji when confronted by them"; (c) laying a foundation for other study of Japanese when one has an enforced break of at least a few months; (d) learning the kanji because they're fun, as a supplement to kana-based Japanese classes (i.e., prior to starting kanji formally); (e) breaking the language down into parts that are more suitable for self-study. Those are my goals, and I suspect the goals of many other adult western learners of Japanese.
There are other goals that I believe are not well-suited to this system: (f) supplementing an intermediate or advanced Japanese language course where you're learning kanji otherwise (Heisig's book could, however, fill in a break in such instruction); (g) rapidly developing basic reading fluency, i.e., in relation to word frrequency or importance; (h) serving as a text for classroom; (i) reviewing or learning grammar.
One thing that I would highly recommend: get the flash cards in addition to this book. Yes, it is possible to make your own, but as other reviewers have noted, that is an unpleasant exercise. In addition, it is error-prone: if you don't know how to write the kanji well, the flash cards are likely to drill poor representations of the kanji. I would also note that Heisig's cards have other valuable information. First, they have cross-references to some common kanji dictionaries for westerners, so it is easy to look up a kanji in those when the key word meaning or stroke order is unclear. Second, they have pronunciation information to complement volume 2 of his system.
Finally, it should be obvious but I'll state it anyway: no book can do the hard work of learning a language for you. Heisig's system has given me what I needed to get over the very high hurdle of learning to write kanji, but it still takes a great deal of patience every day. You have to sit down and practice and review the flash cards, and his book, over and over. For me, it requires at least a few hours per week, in 30 minute pieces here and there -- but mostly it requires patience and diligence. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: This book is brilliant, and SO AM I!
Review: If someone would have told me that I'd be able to learn the Kanji at a rate of 25 per day (or more), I'd have thought they were selling some sort of dorky memory product on TV. I wouldn't have bothered. If someone told me I'd remember their meaning and writing, even stroke order, very easily, after 30 minutes or so spent on each set of 15 or 25 (or more), I'd have thought it was impossible. But it's exactly what I'm doing. And if anyone could see that I'm doing it now, they would be impressed. They would think I was a bloody lingual genius being able to learn this fast (or just psychotically motivated). Now let me tell you a secret. I'm a pretty smart person, but know what? I'm probably not much of a genius, or if I am, this sort of "absolute memory" is certainly not my genius. It is THIS BOOK that gets the credit (and neither am I psychotically motivated, for the record--it is rare that I muster even this much motivation). Here's a little story of how I amazed myself just now. As I've been going through the book, I've been using little flashcards to review (messy ones I made myself--there are PILES of them all over my room, hehe). Not too surprisingly (I trusted this book and expected this), I could remember the meaning of every single kanji I reviewed. Great, huh? But I still said to myself, "Well, remembering the meaning is the main thing. It's no big deal if I can't write them from memory." Of course, I was expecting that, already impressing myself by remembering their meaning, I wouldn't be able to also write them--that was just too hard. But guess what? Just now, I proceeded to write out, from memory, with no mistakes and 95% accuracy, every single Kanji I've learned. How can this be? I am really proud of myself, that's for sure. Simply, this book uses "imaginative memory" instead of brute memory. Little anecdotes and funny mental images will click in your mind, and you'll easily recall these arcane little word pictures, these Kanji. And you're thinking it must be harder than it sounds, right? Wrong! It's actually easier than I make it sound!! (Although I should mention that it DOES require effort. At first, I thought it was never going to work. But then I tried the flashcards and remembered every one of them. It works so well that you don't really even notice--it's like you've always known the things.) PUSH through, give it a shot. You will HIGHLY impress yourself. Want to learn kanji? If you are self-motivated (and want to teach yourself--this will NOT work very well as part of a class), this is the way to do it. This is volume 1, and it will teach you the writing and meaning of over 2000 Kanji (it's like 2145 or something). It will NOT, however, teach you their "reading," meaning while you'll know what they mean when you see them written, you won't know how to say them in Japanese. That is the job of volume 2, a guide to the reading of the Kanji. Volume 3 is the advanced course, teaching you both the reading and writing of a bunch more Kanji that are useful for reading Japanese novels, technical documents, video games, etc. Some say this is a flaw of the book, that meaning/writing and reading are seperate, but it's not a flaw! It is its beauty. By isolated these seperate skills into two volumes, and focusing on each in turn, it unlocks your true ability to learn. These books are amazing. I highly endorse and recommend every single one of them: Remembering the Hiragana/Katakana, then Remembering the Kanji volumes 1, 2 and 3, all by James W. Heisig, who has basically written the best way to learn Japanese by accident (it's how he learned, and fellow students begged him to write out his notes for them, thus, the books were born). One final note: If one were to take two lessons a day, about like 30 Kanji a day, you'll finish in a month (there are around 62 lessons in this book). So, really, you could go through all three books in a matter of 3 months. Slow it down a little, one lesson a day, and it's 6 months, which is still jaw-droppingly fast. The Hiragana/Katakana book (which you should do first) will take about two weeks (it's pretty short). Not bad for a crash-course in reading Japanese, is it? Then all you have left is grammar and stringing it all together into your own thoughts and sentences. At least now we can say that THAT, the grammar, speaking, etc, is the hard part, because for years, westerners have said the "hard part" was learning their weird writing systems. Well, now that's the easy part, thanks to Heisig-san, and if you like the language, even the hard part will be enjoyable for you. I'll see you in Japan!
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