Great article. I’ve steered clear of Heisig myself and just relied on Anki very heavily this last year, but like Owen above, I’ve noticed a trend in my learning of kanji that is interesting. If you learn enough words, the kanji start to converge enough that you can start learning new words with less effort.

For example, I learned the word 光栄 (kōei) recently. I had see 光 from many other words (e.g. 観光, 光明 (buddhism), etc) and 栄 I learned from another word, 栄達 (eitatsu), so when I saw this word, it was easier to put together right off the bat and have a reasonable idea what it meant.

To get to this stage, you definitely have to learn enough words to reach critical mass, and that’s hard. People want the easy way out, and then you see these amateur efforts like you’re talking about, but if you can take the “high road” long enough, it really, really pays off. :)

My wish for a kanji learning resource would be this.
For 2nd language learners initially focus on the 500 kanji that make up 70% of usage. Then progress to the 1000 that make up 90% of usage.
As to the book. I too would like a mix of Basic kanji, Let’s Learn Kanji, and a reader, broken down into manageable chunks. I’d also like exercises and games and SRS. Kakitorikun v3. And a good learner dictionary. I also want it all on an iPad device with pen input. Except for clearances, and a pen enabled iPad, it’s feasible but unlikely. ….

I often wonder if the success reported by many Heisig users has more to do with their use of an SRS system, which is a method that I have bought into. I don’t write characters out hundreds of times, only as often as Anki tells me I need to.

I think part of the issue is Heisig defines the kanji “problem” as one where you have to know 2000 characters to be literate, and offers a solution to memorising the lot. I know how to use perhaps around 500 kanji now. I’m not literate enough to read a newspaper but I’m fine with e-mailing and text chatting and can use a dictionary when I get stuck. I realised that usually, if I see kanji I don’t recognise and look the word up in a dictionary, I don’t actually know the Japanese word anyway and since then I’ve been quite relaxed about kanji. I don’t have a kanji problem as much as I have a vocabulary one. I think this is quite hard to explain to someone who is just starting out and has read many times over, as I did, that you need 2000 kanji to be able to read Japanese, which I think is something of a half truth.

Of course there is no one true way to learn anything and part of the joy (and the frustration) of self study is finding out what works for you. However I think there is probably some space for a decent, comprehensive kanji resource. On my wish list is something that combines the well-thought out order for introducing kanji, exercises and reading passages in the Basic Kanji Book, the detailed information about breaking kanji down into parts, radicals and strokes in Let’s Learn Kanji and the breadth of coverage of Kanji in Context. But despite all of this, a couple of hours paid for with a Japanese tutor who taught me how to recognise and draw the different types of strokes and corrected my penmanship, and a brief conversation with a Chinese friend who helped me break 議 into it’s component parts, which subsequently enabled me to do the same with any complicated looking kanji, proved more invaluable than any book time.

Over the last few months I’ve been going through my Anki deck again to relearn the RTK1 Kanji. This time around it’s with a working vocabulary of about 1800 words. Although my vocabulary is still very limited I’ve noticed a few things. As I go through the deck again I already know at least one word or reading for maybe half of the characters. Because of this a lot of the keywords have become ambiguous like you mentioned. My current strategy is to supplement the keyword with either a reading or a full Japanese word. I think this is probably because once you’ve developed a Japanese lexicon the keywords start transforming into possible Japanese words automatically.

In retrospect I’m not sure I would have done anything differently (with the exception of dropping reviews for a while. Clear mistake there). When I started my studies I found it incredibly difficult to learn vocabulary words. When I “finished” RTK1 the first time I felt utterly inadequate and unbalanced from my lack of vocab. The result of this was that I binged on vocabulary words for a while (in full Kanji). Now I’m bringing RTK back into the picture, albeit in a slightly augmented way.

I agree with your intuitions that there must be a better and more balanced way to learn the Kanji and voacbulary concurrently. For now I suppose I’m still overwhelmed and in over my head learning the language so I’ll just keep plodding along and try to cover as much ground as possible.

This was an interesting post, thank you!

Owen