AbeBooks.com: Kanji Pict-O-Graphix: Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics (702) by Michael Rowley and a great selection of similar New, Used and. I'm currently at work on a six-box set. Kanji Pict-o-Graphix: Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics 3.85 avg rating — 236 ratings. Buy a cheap copy of Kanji Pict-o-Graphix: Over 1,000. We personally assess every book's quality and offer rare, out-of-print treasures.

1. Kanji Pict O-graphix

Overview 'Kanji Pict-o-Graphix offers an engaging way to learn and memorize Kanji.' Rocky Mountain Region Japan Project 'A fun book for studying kanji. The illustration reveals more of its contents and method than any description ever could.' 'Japan Times'It is a very nice book, simple and pretty effective. A useful addition to the library of all beginners who aspire to learn Japanese. 'Protoculture Addicts'Learn more about kanji from Stone Bridge Press: 'KanaPict-o-Gr'aphix, 'Designing with Kanji,' 'Kanji Starter' 1&2, and 'Crazy for Kanji'.

Why should a picture of a misshapen person, eye, heart and ear make you remember Kanji #549 'Listen'? Or one man beating another with a stick, Kanji #400, 'Industrious?' For the same reason King Philip Came Over For Good Sax., I suppose - who knows why and how mnemonics work, but in this cleverly (sometimes, fiendishly so) illustrated volume, Michael Rowley provides memorable mind-helpers for those learning Kanji, or just simply fascinated with the development of this writing system borrowed from the Chinese.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.' 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. 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.

Kanji Pict O-graphix

How does one learn kanji, the characters of written Japanese? The traditional approach is rote memorization. Japanese children write each kanji hundreds of times at their desks, and eventually they are acquired. Michael Rowley offers a different way, a mnemonic-association approach that provides a hook on which to hang the meaning and retrieve it easily when the kanji comes into view. The concept is simple: each character is represented under the word or concept it stands for (such as turf, bamboo, eat, or duty), followed by the pronunciations of the word in Chinese and Japanese, and a drawing that captures the meaning and resembles the character enough so that it'll come to mind whenever the kanji is seen. 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.