Kanji Pict-O-Graphix: Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics

Organized thematically in chapters such as "Power," "Places," "Tools," "The World," "Food," "People," and "The Body," Rowley's book lets you learn the root symbols before teaching the words that add to them for further meanings. For example, the character for water is a splatter of three dashes that Rowley pictures as three splashing water drops. Later, you see that steam, float, boil, dirt, and bathe all build on the water character. For steam, there's the water character plus a series of lines that Rowley exaggerates to resemble swirling, vapory tendrils, and the association helps. Building on units of memory and relationship, recall is aided considerably by the simple yet evocative drawings. Rowley even manages to help with the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, providing appealing pictures that look a bit like the letters in question and begin with the same sounds. So the na letter looks like a knot, nu resembles Rowley's drawing of noodles held by chopsticks, and it's easier to remember which symbol means te when you picture a telephone pole.

It's hard to do Rowley's book justice with words, since the visual element is what makes it tick. He does a wonderful job, blending insight, imagination, and drawing technique, in a book that far surpasses the old rote method, making kanji learning both appealing and accessible. --Stephanie Gold

Product Description
Japanese written characters, or kanji, have their origin in a picture-language developed in ancient China. Over time this language evolved into stylized abstract forms that are difficult to memorize. This delightful book presents 1,200 kanji with readings, main definitions, standard printed forms, and visual and text mnemonics to make them easier to remember. Fully indexed and cross-referenced. Winner of several international design awards.

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."


Great introduction to Kanji   October 20, 2001
M. Karapcik (Temple Terrace, FL)
20 out of 24 found this review helpful

While the number of Kanji is a bit small (the Toyo Kanji list was 1,850 when I was in college), and it is not always useful in remembering the Japanese onyomi and kunyomi, it is perfect for simply learning the meanings. Since this is the first step to learning kanji, and all many people are interrested in, this book is a very valueable learning tool. I wish I had it in college.


READ THIS REVIEW -- University of Florida Student   May 10, 1999
James Maloney (james@phys.ufl.edu) (Boston, Massachusetts)
23 out of 28 found this review helpful

Please read this review. I say this only because I would like to recommend this book to anyone who is beginning Japanese and needs to memorize the cumbersome Hiragana and Katakana characters. This is, bar none, the easiest way to mnemonically retain both the characters and their sounds, period! All it takes is half an hour of trying to read any Japanese text while flipping back through Rowley's book and his ingenious pictures will begin appearing right before your eyes, instilling instant gratification of a sense of progress. However, Rowley's main focus is on Kanji, which he does just a magnificent a job of illucidating and entrenching their definitions upon anyone who reads this text. I would suggest to any student, including those who do not need any knowledge of Kanji, to give this text a try for the sheer brilliance in which Rowley has takled these most formidable phonetic syllabaries, Hiragana and Katakana.


also useful for Japanese   April 12, 2000
Hideto Matsumoto (Japan)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Not only for non-Japanese but also for Japanse, Kanji is somthing strange, hard to understand and interesting. Many dictionary called 'Kanwa-Jiten (kanji dictionary)' have been published in Japan, but they don't have a good idea of displaing such Kanji's attractiveness. This book has done the great thing.


Highly reccomended, great visual & written mnemonics   May 2, 2000
Angel Lee (Cleveland, OH United States)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful

I have bought lots of Kanji books and this is one of my favorites. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to learn to read the Kanji characters. The visual and written mnemonics really helped me remember the characters.

The book is broken down by subjects; some include the world, food, body, people and animals. For each word the Kanji character, reference #, English meaning and visual/text mnemonic are show.

On and Kun readings, as well as the schematic of elements are also included. There is a Kanji index in the back.My only wishes were that it had the romaji translation and contained information on how to write the characters.