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The Key To Kanji Vs Remembering The Kanji

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So for my 20th blog entry I thought I'd add a bit more personality to the format. In this entry, I wanted to compare The Key to Kanji by Niroko Kurosawa Williams with Remembering the Kanji by James W. Heisig.

Remembering the Kanji by James W. Heisig.
➡ Heisig's book is available for about 40$ for the first book in the series.
➡ It is 460 pages long (the fifth edition).

➡Apart from a short introduction, most of the content is about using Stories, plot and elements to remember the kanji.
➡ While the stroke order for the core elements is presented, there's no mention of the kun-yomi or on-yomi which is a disappointing shortcoming.
➡ Kanji are not presented as part of vocabulary words (when applicable). This is another shortcoming to the book.
➡ Both previously mentioned omissions could have probably been added in by optimizing the formatting of the book's entry:
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➡ While the stories can help to remember the general meaning of certain kanjis, the method is still very limited as certain kanji have various general meaning depending on the context or words they are used with.
➡ While some stories will have some impact upon some readers, others won't. This is why the author encourages the reader to make up his/her own stories from primitive elements to remember the kanji in a way which is meaningful. He further mentions that: "As you progress through the final section, you may wish even to return and amend some of those earlier stories." (p.179).
➡ Starting from lesson 20 on, less and less stories are provided for each individual kanji. This, I find, is problematic.
The book is meant to provide stories to help readers to remember the kanji as for example here:
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That is the whole purpose of the book's content. I can't help but to get the impression that the author ran out of stories for all the kanjis and decided to cop out of his methodology by letting the reader to the rest of the work. Out of the 2042 kanjis in the book, hundreds are not provided stories for.
What was preventing the author from providing his own suggestion for stories and let the reader decide which ones to keep and which ones to make up on their own?
➡ The missing stories for hundreds of characters, the missing yun/on readings and vocabulary words makes the book a disappointment from my point of view. The book ultimately allows the reader to recognize written kanji and associate it individually to a general meaning. This result is very limited in its usefulness.


The Key to Kanji by Niroko Kurosawa Williams.
➡ The book is about 60$ and 355 pages long.
➡The introduction of the book covers the historical development of kanji forms along with the development of both Katakana and Hiragana.
➡ Also presented are the 184 section headers and along with some explanations about each one.
➡ Each entry provides kun/on yomi readings, general meaning, example in context with vocabulary words along with furigana, header and etymological explanation:
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➡ All in all, I'd say the book is far superior to Remembering the Kanji although it technically contains less kanji it's more thorough and just has a better general production value.

An Example in Context
What better way to illustrate the usefulness of each individual book by seeing how they are used in context.
Suppose I take this excerpt from La Mulana:
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More specifically the 「
」kanji.
Here's the information provided by the The Key to Kanji:
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Compared to Remembering the Kanji:
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I hope this gives more insight about both books and help you make your decision about purchasing something which meets your needs.

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Zizka
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