Japanese - Remembering The Kanji Volume 1.pdf - Japonia - KocikFilozof

Remembering the Kanji

vol. I

A complete course on how not to forget

the meaning and writing

of Japanese characters

James W. Heisig

fourth edition

japan publications trading co., ltd.

thereof in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by Japan Publications Trading Co., Ltd.

1–2–1 Sarugaku-chõ, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101–0064 Japan

First edition: 1977

Second edition: 1985

Third edition, First printing: July 1986

Fifteenth printing: November 1999

Fourth edition, First printing: September 2001

Distributors:

united states: Kodansha America, Inc. through

Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10016

canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd., 195 Allstate Parkway, Markham,

Ontario l3r 4t8

united kingdom and europe: Premier Book Marketing Ltd.,

Clarendon House, 52 Cornmarket Street, Oxford ox1 3hj, England

australia and new zealand: Bookwise International, 54 Crittenden Road,

Findon, South Australia 5023, Australia

asia and japan: Japan Publications Trading Co., Ltd.,

1–2–1 Sarugaku-chõ, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101–0064 Japan

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

isbn 4-88996-075-9

Printed in Japan

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Note to the 4th Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

part one: Stories (Lessons 1–12) . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

part two: Plots (Lessons 13–19) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

part three: Elements (Lessons 20–56) . . . . . . . . . . 197

Indexes

i. Kanji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

ii. Primitive Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

iii. Kanji Arranged in Order of Strokes . . . . . . . . . 495

iv. Key Words and Primitive Meanings . . . . . . . . . .505

Introduction

The aim of this book is to provide the student of Japanese with a simple

method for correlating the writing and the meaning of Japanese characters in

such a way as to make them both easy to remember. It is intended not only for

the beginner, but also for the more advanced student looking for some relief

to the constant frustration of forgetting how to write the kanji and some way

to systematize what he or she already knows. By showing how to break down

the complexities of the Japanese writing system into its basic elements and sug-

gesting ways to reconstruct meanings from those elements, the method offers

a new perspective from which to learn the kanji.

There are, of course, many things that the pages of this book will not do for

you. You will read nothing about how kanji combine to form compounds. Nor

is anything said about the various ways to pronounce the characters. Further-

more, all questions of grammatical usage have been omitted. These are all mat-

ters that need specialized treatment in their own right. Meantime, remember-

ing the meaning and the writing of the kanji—perhaps the single most dif³cult

barrier to learning Japanese—can be greatly simpli³ed if the two are isolated

and studied apart from everything else.

What makes forgetting the kanji so natural is their lack of connection with

normal patterns of visual memory. We are used to hills and roads, to the faces

of people and the skylines of cities, to µowers, animals, and the phenomena of

nature. And while only a fraction of what we see is readily recalled, we are

con³dent that, given proper attention, anything we choose to remember, we

can. That con³dence is lacking in the world of the kanji. The closest approxi-

mation to the kind of memory patterns required by the kanji is to be seen in

the various alphabets and number-systems we know. The difference is that

while these symbols are very few and often sound-related, the kanji number in

the thousands and have no consistent phonetic value. Nonetheless, traditional

methods for learning the characters have been the same as those for learning

alphabets: drill the shapes one by one, again and again, year after year. What-

ever ascetical value there is in such an exercise, the more ef³cient way would

be to relate the characters to something other than their sounds in the ³rst

place, and so to break ties with the visual memory we rely on for learning our

alphabets.

introduction

The origins of the Japanese writing system can be traced back to ancient

China and the eighteenth century before the Christian era. In the form in

which we ³nd Chinese writing codi³ed some 1,000 years later, it was made up

largely of pictographic, detailed glyphs. These were further transformed and

stylized down through the centuries, so that by the time the Japanese were

introduced to the kanji by Buddhist monks from Korea and started experi-

menting with ways to adapt the Chinese writing system to their own language

(about the fourth to seventh centuries of our era), they were already dealing

with far more ideographic and abstract forms. The Japanese made their own

contributions and changes in time, as was to be expected. And like every mod-

ern Oriental culture that uses the kanji, they continue to do so, though now

more in matters of usage than form.

So fascinating is this story that many have encouraged the study of etymol-

ogy as a way to remember the kanji. Unfortunately, the student quickly learns

the many disadvantages of such an approach. As charming as it is to see the

ancient drawing of a woman etched behind its respective kanji, or to discover

the rudimentary form of a hand or a tree or a house, when the character itself

is removed, the clear visual memory of the familiar object is precious little help

for recalling how to write it. Proper etymological studies are most helpful after

one has learned the general-use kanji. Before that, they only add to one’s mem-

ory problems. We need a still more radical departure from visual memory.

Let me paint the impasse in another, more graphic, way. Picture yourself

holding a kaleidoscope up to the light as still as possible, trying to ³x in mem-

ory the particular pattern that the play of light and mirrors and colored stones

has created. Chances are you have such an untrained memory for such things

that it will take some time; but let us suppose that you succeed after ten or

³fteen minutes. You close your eyes, trace the pattern in your head, and then

check your image against the original pattern until you are sure you have it

remembered. Then someone passes by and jars your elbow. The pattern is lost,

and in its place a new jumble appears. Immediately your memory begins to

scramble. You set the kaleidoscope aside, sit down, and try to draw what you

had just memorized, but to no avail. There is simply nothing left in memory

to grab hold of. The kanji are like that. One can sit at one’s desk and drill a half

dozen characters for an hour or two, only to discover on the morrow that

when something similar is seen, the former memory is erased or hopelessly

confused by the new information.

Now the odd thing is not that this occurs, but rather that, instead of openly

admitting one’s distrust of purely visual memory, one accuses oneself of a poor

memory or lack of discipline and keeps on following the same routine. Thus,

by placing the blame on a poor visual memory, one overlooks the possibility of

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