How NOT to Study Kanji

The only goal of kanji study is to learn to associate each kanji with a meaning (e.g., “火” means “fire”). This is a singular task, and it should be the entire focus of your kanji study. Because once you have built sufficient kanji-meaning associations, you can get to the good stuff and start reading Japanese.

The problem is that it’s all too easy to try to pick up more information than is necessary when studying kanji, which unnecessarily drags out the whole process. For instance, it’s easy to find yourself studying the kunyomi 訓読み(くんよみ) and onyomi 音読み(おんよみ) that go with each kanji because these often appear in pre-made kanji flashcards. Ignore this extra information and focus only on building kanji-meaning associations. Remember, it’s much better to pick up the onyomi and kunyomi as a native speaker would through contextual reading of native Japanese, and you can start that process sooner if you focus only on kanji-meaning associations.

But even when your kanji study is focused solely on building kanji-meaning associations, there are differing schools on how to approach this task. The mainstream advice is that you need to learn the radicals, the stroke order, and a mnemonic story for each kanji to help you build the necessary kanji-meaning associations.

This is the approach popularized by Heisig in Remembering the Kanji, and it’s a big fat waste of your time. While some people may have found Heisig’s approach to be useful for learning the kanji, I can assure you that the method is overkill and unnecessarily slow.

The problem with the Heisig approach is the degree of kanji-association building it strives for. Heisig’s approach is aimed at helping students to remember how to write kanji by hand. This necessarily requires learning all the subcomponents of each kanji, because without a systematic approach, the sheer complexity of some kanji and the subtle differences between nearly identical kanji will make it exceedingly difficult to remember how to write kanji correctly. Just try writing 憂鬱(ゆううつ) and you’ll see what I mean.

But our goal is to learn to read kanji in context. This is an entirely different endeavor from writing kanji. Where writing requires reproducing kanji stroke by stroke, reading kanji only requires recognizing the kanji. Reproduction is a higher standard of meaning-association building because it requires you to create the kanji from scratch instead of merely identifying a preexisting kanji. Sure, this means that you could follow the Heisig approach and build the kanji-associations needed to read Japanese. But the effort to learn kanji for reproduction is far more involved than the lesser standard of meaning-association building for recognition, which means the Heisig approach will take longer and will not help you read any better.

Reproduction means being able to reproduce a kanji in writing when prompted with the associated meaning. This means that when someone says “fire,” you can remember to write “火”. To study kanji for reproduction, you will need to have a flashcard that has a meaning on it. Next you will try writing out the kanji on a piece of paper. And finally, you will flip the flashcard to see the correct writing of the kanji and see if you got it correct.

In contrast, your reverse this approach when studying kanji for recognition. Instead of starting with the meaning, the front side of the flashcard will show the kanji itself. You then will try to remember the meaning of the kanji, and then check the back of the card to determine if you remembered the meaning correctly.

Unlike studying kanji for reproduction, which requires a perfect recollection of the radicals and the stroke order to write the kanji, studying for recognition requires identifying the kanji as a whole. Like human faces, you can recognize different kanji through context and familiarity, even if you can’t perfectly reproduce them in a sketch. And because you can identify different kanji without having to specifically learn radicals or stroke order, this means such efforts are completely unnecessary as part of your kanji study.

This also means you can eliminate the need to learn Heisig’s mnemonics for each kanji. While mnemonics are general purpose memory aids, Heisig advocates learning specific mnemonics to help you remember the radicals that make up particular kanji. Heisig does this by creating stories that connect the radicals to a kanji’s meaning. For instance, the kanji “亡” which means “perish” is described through a narrative involving the radicals for hook and top hat:

But our goal is not to learn which radicals go with which kanji. Our goal is to learn to associate “亡” with “perish.” Taking the additional steps of trying to learn the radicals, their stroke order, and a story involving the radicals just to learn that that “亡” means “perish” is a tremendous effort. Especially when you only need to learn that “亡” means “perish” to start reading.

So just study that. Don’t waste your time learning the radicals, kanji stroke orders, and mnemonic stories. Go straight to studying kanji-meaning associations.

Remember the reason you are studying kanji in the first place and don’t be distracted by side goals. Your goal, your singular goal, is to start reading in Japanese as soon as you can. Don’t slow yourself down trying to pick up unnecessary information about each kanji. And don’t slow yourself down by studying kanji for reproduction. Study kanji for recognition. If you do, the time you save and speed of your progress will astound you.