Visual learners, you are so lucky! If your are a visual learner, you may well find kanji easier to learn than most other people do because of their pictorial nature. However, there is a way that even you can accelerate your existing kanji-learning advantage:

Michael Rowley's book Kanji Pict-O-Graphix presents reader with just over 1,000 kanji in a visually memorable form. Taking each character, he first breaks it down into constituent radicals. However, in contrast to Henshall’s academic approach (see Part 1), Rowley uses a visual cue for each element to produce beautifully-drawn illustrations that both carry meaning and hint at shape of kanji. He also provides a brief mnemonic phrase to provide additional reinforcement, although this is not core of this method. It is clear, high-impact illustrations that give his approach its effectiveness.

But don’t give up hope just yet! There are tools that can transform you from a kanji klutz to a veritable genius. That does not mean that it will take no work, sweat or tears. (I would be lying if I told you it would completely pain-free.) But you can gain a good grasp of kanji with a lot less these than you would think.

So let’s look at two approaches that can have you gobbling up kanji like there is no tomorrow. In Part 1, I will talk you through mnemonic methods, and then in Part 2 I will focus on methods that can benefit visual learners.

Mnemonic Methods

“Mnemonic” simply means a device, formula or rhyme used to assist memorization. An example of a mnemonic embedded in my mind from childhood is “Never Eat Shredded Wheat”. As a rhyme it has nothing to do with navigation or geography, but it helped me learn points of compass.

So let’s have a look at mnemonic approaches that can speed-up kanji learning.

James Heisig's Remembering Kanji Series

Heisig's mnemonic-based approach is not only famous for claims its practitioners have made of rapid kanji assimilation (1,000 kanji in 29 days, for example), but also for critical flack it has attracted from traditionalists.

Undoubtedly, method has flaws: The student being encouraged to associate a single, very narrow and sometimes non-standard meaning with a particular kanji being a major one. However, fact that Heisig's approach is geared to Westerners also has advantages: Focusing on meaning before pronunciation is of more practical value to adult Western student, since while meaning is key to understanding, pronunciation of kanji is of little value unless reading aloud.