Many Japanese people complement me on my knowledge of kanji. Indeed, I have advanced to be able to understand at least the meaning, if not the reading, of about 2,000 characters. I would estimate that I can read about 1,500 of these fluently. Michiko has urged me to write a little bit about how to study kanji for those who wish to accomplish similar goals.

The first thing I always recommend regarding any component of language study is that you find something about it that’s enjoyable. Usually, this will be a way to use what you learn productively as soon as possible. If your only goal is to be able to read a Japanese newspaper two years from now, you will surely give up before then since most people can’t keep drilling themselves for that long before reaping the fruits of their labor. You need a more attainable goal.

My first suggestion is actually best suited to those with little to no prior knowledge of kanji. It’s called Remembering the Kanji, by James Heisig. Heisig’s premise is that because the characters communicate meaning largely independently of the language, we can study them entirely on their own without obliging ourselves to actually learn the sounds and words that go with them. Heisig takes this premise and runs with it by suggesting that a beginning student actually learn the meaning of all 2,136 general use characters, and how to write them, before proceeding to learn how they specifically apply to Japanese. Heisig has the learner assign a meaning to each possible component of a character and then develop stories to help them remember the characters.

I myself used this method extensively, and although I didn’t fully see it through, I found the techniques I learned to be enormously helpful even when I chose to study kanji in other ways. So how on earth does Remembering the Kanji constitute an “attainable goal”? Well, for me each new character was a new challenge, and when I learned to write it from memory, I met a goal and found satisfaction. I was able to use the knowledge I learned about the composition of characters right away. In this sense, this method should be viewed not as one enormous goal, but as a set of 2,136 little ones. Here’s a link to a sample of the book: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2012/12/RK-1-6th-edition-sample.pdf

While my first suggestion involved writing kanji exclusive of their readings, my second one involves learning to read kanji without bothering to learn to write them or study them independently at all. Think about when you were learning to read English as a kid. Did your teacher have you make flashcards of letter combinations that produced different sounds in different words, like bough, through and dough? Probably not. You were likely only taught in this way if the traditional methods of “sounding out” and reading along with an adult didn’t work. The reason that we as students of Japanese must get so analytical is that we can’t just sit on mommy’s lap and pick up the language like the kids we once were. Or can we?

It turns out that the internet has become the new mother to us all in the form of pera pera kun, a free (with a suggested $5 donation) application for chrome and firefox that gives the meaning and reading of words simply by mousing over them. My second suggestion is to use this tool paired with readings of increasing difficulty to help you learn to read Japanese the same way you did English, while simultaneously building your vocabulary. This method also presents an attainable goal right away, since no matter what your level is, you can understand reading material right away using the instant lookup power of pera pera kun. Also, you can make reading comprehension experience more enjoyable by finding material that you enjoy reading about. Here’s the link to the firefox version of pera pera kun: https://addons.mozilla.org/ja/firefox/addon/perapera-kun-japanese-popup-tr/

Notice that my two recommended methods focus on the extremes of kanji learning: the pure meaning and form of the characters, and the practical application of the characters to real Japanese. Most learning methods in use involve a mixture; typically a student might be made to study the components, stroke order, on-yomi and kun-yomi, and a couple example compounds before moving on. I tried this for a few minutes, found it unbearably tedious、and went back to my two favorite methods. Because I worked on both reading and writing, I learned everything I was supposed to about the kanji anyways, but I had fun while doing it. The key is to learn for some concrete, immediate purpose and not just learn something for the sake of having more knowledge.The more you think along these lines, the more reasons you will find to motivate you to learn, no matter what the subject, and the more knowledgeable you will inevitably become.

Happy studies!

P.S. at my current level of Japanese, since I can comprehend native-level texts even though I don’t know every word, I have broken into reading actual books of interest to me and just writing down words whose kanji, readings, or meanings I’m rusty at, or unfamiliar with. I almost never see something I’m completely stumped on, so I just keep reading, then take a break and look up the words I wrote down, then keep reading. This lets me practice everything at once in a native-like way, including the very crucial skill of inferring overall meaning from incomplete information. When you are comfortable, I suggest you do the same.