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Summary: Featureless faces form firm figures from Fuji-land
Review: Why should a picture of a misshapen person, eye, heart and ear make you remember Kanji #549 "Listen"? Or one man beating another with a stick, Kanji #400, "Industrious?" For the same reason King Philip Came Over For Good Sax*, I suppose - who knows why and how mnemonics work, but in this cleverly (sometimes, fiendishly so) illustrated volume, Michael Rowley provides memorable mind-helpers for those learning Kanji, or just simply fascinated with the development of this writing system borrowed from the Chinese.The book aggregates kanji into thematic groups, determined by the radical, or root element, of each kanji, and makes for much easier comprehension than standard elementary Kanji texts. Each kanji is presented with its Japanese and Chinese reading (very, very roughly speaking, similar to the way we have the Germanic "sweat" and Latinate "perspire" to mean the same thing), a brainy icon system for indicating which part of the kanji comes from which other character, and a mnemonic. Rowley uses bold, strong graphic elements, and those lovable faceless "people-oids" you remember from 1970s government-issued pamphlets to illustrate the meaning, along with those odd quirks of literature - the mnemonic ("Our rice products earn a pile of money" or "the prisoner's hands are bound with thread"). Distinctive, odd, and, yes, MEMORABLE. This charming book is good for curious teens, the diligent Nihongo-phile, or the dedicate sensei's toolkit. Enjoy strongly! (p.s. My favorite Kanji is #96, "Snow") * The classic mnemonic from biology for recalling Linnaean taxonomy: "kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species."
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Summary: The place to start learning Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana!
Review: Without this book, the task of learning Kanji becomes horribly difficult. Michael Rowley takes 1250 of the 2000 basic kanji, needed for basic Japanese literacy, and breaks them down into fun, understandable pictures through which you can easily understand and memorize them. Japanese is a complex enough language WITH this book, so without this book I assume it would be boring, rote memorization of intangible Japanese graphics. Michael's organization isn't by use, but by subjects centering around radicals (smaller Kanji being parts of more complex Kanji) describing the world, people, tools, animals, the elements, numbers, motion, directions, etc. It also features a great Hiragana and Katakana picto-graphic guide up front. While not including all the combinations of the syllabic alphabets, it does give all the basic characters, pronunciations and comparable drawings allowing for easy memorization. Because of this book, Kanji seems approachable and fun. A feat none of my other text books come close to achieving even slightly. The one fault: Mr. Rowley never put out the follow up text for the rest of the 2000 basic Kanji!! Help!
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