Remembering the Kanji 2, Third Edition

Note to the 2nd Edition

introduction | 7 kana syllabaries. It is nothing of the kind. It is rather a slow and self-inflicted amputation that will leave you crippled for the rest of your Japanese-reading years. Not only does the Roman alphabet inflict quirks on your pronunciation, it cultivates a systematic bias against the kana that gets harder and harder to uproot. Be patient with the kana, and never write Roman letters beneath them. The stricter you are in expelling all rōmaji from your study of Japanese words, the quicker you will find that Roman letters become an obstacle to reading and writing, which they are for the Japanese and should be for anyone learning the language. Shinano-Ōmachi, Japan 28 December 1978 Note to the 2nd Edition The material in these pages was composed during the third month after my arrival in Japan. I had just completed a volume describing the method I had used to learn the meaning and writing of the kanji, and I was anxious to try my hand at systematizing the notorious haphazardry of the readings. Once finished, the manuscript circulated for eight years in photocopy among a number of students of Japanese around the world. Their suggestions and contributions did a lot to round off the rough edges and save me from embarrassing mistakes. Only in 1986, with the encouragement and cooperation of Nakamura Toshihide and Murakami Yūnosuke of the Japan Publications Trading Company, did the book appear in print. Since that time it has gone through eleven printings and formed the basis for a set of flash cards published two years later. Aside from a longstanding wish to make minor adjustments here and there in the examples and indexes, the immediate stimulus for a new edition has come from the preparation of a Spanish edition as a companion volume to the translation of vol. 1. The translation has also rekindled another longstanding desire, echoed in numerous letters from readers over the years: to prepare a reader to facilitate the use of this volume. The project has yet to materialize, but at least I can say that it is more in mind now than it has ever been. Nagoya, Japan 2 January 2004 ...