Essential Kanji is an integrated course for learning to read and write the 2,000 basic Japanese characters. It introduces the kanji that are now in everyday use, a mastery of which makes it possible to read most modern Japanese. Devised for either home or classroom use, the book has been tested and refined by years of use in university classes taught by the author.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a casual glance into Japanese or looking to travel to Japan someday and needs a firm grasp of the written language.

44 of 48 found the following review helpful:


Excellent Resource  Aug 17, 2001 By Kelli
In a somewhat crowded market of Kanji resources, this book serves as an excellent learning tool and resource for 2,000 very useful Kanji. The book is organized according to level of difficulty, and introduces Kanji only based on elements that relate to a prior Kanji learned. A helpful index of readings (ON and kun) helps one identify quickly sound-loans and related Kanji with much ease. Critics of the book harp on the use of roomaji for the readings, but this is a minor quibble for what is otherwise a very worthy and useful tool for the student of Japanese.

32 of 34 found the following review helpful:


Good buy for kanji stroke order and learning, but....  Sep 29, 2005 By James Steele Howard
I bought this book to take an indipendent study at my college. My plan was to study/learn 500 Kanji this semester. I am currently at about 120, and the book has been the most used item in the study. It does a very good job of teaching stroke order, written and typed writings of the kanji. The only problem is that because it only uses kanji the book has already taught in the vocabulary examples for the kanji the examples are a little odd sounding to a native speaker of Japanese. For example: the kanji for koe or voice gives the example of shounen no koegawari or the braking of voice. Where a more useful way to use the kanji would be to use it in ichikoe or a shout. It is just a little odd some times. As long as you have a way to check some of the deffinitions then this is a very good book. It is also very useful to have the back of the book to look up forgotten kanji. Good book, but a little odd in some parts.

20 of 20 found the following review helpful:


It's good, but...  Jan 09, 2007 By Michael Hendricks "Retribution"
If you're a beginner at Japanese, don't buy this book. You most likely won't understand a lot of the examples, and there is no point to know 100+ kanji and not have the ability to use them in sentences.

If you're past beginner stage, buy this book but be warned. As others have already stated, the pronunciations are giving in romaji. While this may not seem like a good idea, it is important if you intend to take any Japanese Proficiency tests, which will require that you are able to identify the correct kana equivalent to various kanji. Also, the example words given are often VERY obscure and often not even used. My current Japanese professor, who is a native of Japan and has a Ph.D. in Japanese Language, did not think that some of the examples were actual words. Third, the examples do not show how all pronunciations are used, so you are often required to look up words in a dictionary to find an example. This is very difficult when the kanji in question is not the first letter in the word. Lastly, the book gives EVERY pronunciation for each kanji. That might sound nice, but I have encountered some pronunciations that are so archaic it seems no Japanese person uses them now.

So, buy it for a well ordered introduction to kanji. It introduces the characters in an order which is beneficial for memorization and usually succeeds in keeping the simplest/building-block kanji at the beginning so one can determine how meanings are derived. Although, chi, blood, is number 300 something, while sara, plate, from which chi is derived, is 1891...weird, huh?

Honestly, I think it's a good learning tool, but you'll need some other books to fill in its gaps.

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