Kanji from the Start: A Comprehensive Japanese Reader

By Martin Lam and Kaoru Shimizu

Book Overview

A reader for basic-level learners who are already familiar with hiragana and katkana. The book includes 500 individual kanji, and over 1000 compounds are introduced and explained. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 477001936X
• ISBN13: 9784770019363
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 1.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

This Book Makes Reading Japanese Accessible

Let's face it, learning to read material written in Japanese is not easy! What "Kanji From the Start" does admirably well is to take a person who knows little about the language and teaches him or her how to read it in about 3 months, I would say. You will learn 600 Kanji along the way. The readings presented are graded from easy to more difficult and several subject areas are covered. There are readings in Japanese family life, politics, economics and history. Also, the grammar is fully explained and the romanization of the text is side by side with the actual translation. The Japanese text stands alone on its own page with small letters directing the learner to grammar notes. What I would suggest is that you familiarize yourself with the Kana before attempting this book. I used "Let's Learn Hiragana" and "Let's Learn Katakana". Additionally, you should have "A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese" by Sakade, et al. "Kanji From the Start" does not go into how to write. Kanji have a very definite stroke order. Sakade's book shows you how to write the characters. It is very well organized and easy to use. Writing the characters is a definite aid in remembering them. In my opinion that is all you need in order to successfully study and complete "Kanji From the Start" and thereby successfuly read Japanese.

Great for review!

This is not a book to use if you are starting out in Japanese. However it is a wonderful book if you have the basics under your belt and wish to review and go further in the language. I studied Japanese about ten years ago and have been wanting to get back into it. The beginning texts that I own are way to simple at this point and I am too rusty to jump right back into the intermediate text book. Kanji From the Start is perfect for my needs however. Working on the text a little bit at a time brushed up and increased my knowledge of grammer, of Kanji and Kanji compounds. I should note that while the grammar notes are quite useful it is helpful to have other references on hand to dig deeper into some of the more complex sentences.

Good for intermediate japanese students

This is not an easy book to work through but it is the bridge that I've been looking for. I'm well versed in hiragana, katakana and the meanings of a large amount of Kanji through James Heisg, Remembering the Kanji I. I've been wanting to jump into reading Kanji for awhile now. With an eye to working through children's books and finally towards novels in Japanese. I've found books that either were very easy (meant for the beginner student) or very hard (no explanation at all on how to read the kanji). This book, has done exactly what I wanted, a good introduction for the intermediate Japanese student with Chapters that get progressively harder with each story building on the last.

A useful book for the student of Japanese

Most textbooks designed for English-speaking students of the Japanese language either give their exercises and readings in Rooma-ji (the western alphabet) or else in hiragana and katakana (the syllabaries used in Japan, each with about 50 characters). If someone is aiming at being able to READ as well as speak Japanese, both strategies are less than ideal, since rooma-ji is normally not used in Japan at all, save for occasional street signs or store names, and hiragana and katakana are used only for those words not normally written in kanji (kanji being the 1800 or so characters imported from China -- each of which often has multiple meanings and/or pronunciations). Kanji, as difficult as they are to master, are a fact of life in Japan, and in my opinion there are only two strategies that make sense in regard to them: 1. Dive in all the way, memorize all the common ones and become literate in Japanese; 2. Totally ignore the damn things and get by on the spoken language and the aid of English speaking Japanese (the route I seem to be on). For students of the first path, this is an EXCELLENT book --the readings are well organized, the kanji are thoroughly explained, and there's plenty of supplemental grammar and so forth, so that even a beginning student, with work, can profit from the text. I wouldn't "start" studying Japanese with this book, though -- you should have some basic familiarity with the language, both as a spoken phenomenon and as a grammatical system, before you dig into this book. If you're there, though, and want to commit to the "kanji adventure," this is an excellent text for you, and will serve you, in the long run, much better than studying in either Rooma-ji or the syllaberies will. By the way, it's designed more for self-study than classroom use, and is nicely formatted -- an attractive book, well worth the money.

The essential Kanji guide.

This book is very well writen. Writes a story first in Kanji (characters) next in romanji (japanese words in english letters) and then finnally in English. A very practical and effective guide.