Japanese Kanji Power is a workbook for mastering Japanese characters (Kanji) with the added power of a dictionary. This resource is essential for the serious student looking to get an A in Kanji class or the Japanese language enthusiast ready to take written Japanese to the next level. This new expanded edition teaches all 464 essential Kanji required for Levels 4 and 5 of the new Japanese Language Proficiency Test and the AP Japanese Language exam. Each Kanji is presented with the information needed to learn and remember the character and its many variations and uses. Cumulative exercises allow students to practice the Kanji and strengthen existing knowledge. An indexing feature allows Japanese Kanji Power to function as a Kanji dictionary. The presentation of each Kanji incorporates a number of key features, including: Several example sentences that introduce each kanji reading in context. A list of frequently-used compounds and phrases that allows you to increase your practical vocabulary. Background information, such as the original of the character of a mnemonic to aid in memorization. Stroke count and a stroke-order diagram. Writing hints and a writing practice grid. Numerous exercises and frequent reviews for reinforcement.

Enables the student of Japanese to easily master the 240 most important kanji.

Japanese Kanji Power is a workbook for mastering Japanese characters (Kanji) with the added power of a dictionary. This resource is essential for the serious student looking to get an A in Kanji class or the Japanese language enthusiast ready to take written Japanese to the next level. This new expanded edition teaches all 464 essential Kanji required for Levels 4 and 5 of the new Japanese Language Proficiency Test and the AP Japanese Language exam. Each Kanji is presented with the information needed to learn and remember the character and its many variations and uses. Cumulative exercises allow students to practice the Kanji and strengthen existing knowledge. An indexing feature allows Japanese Kanji Power to function as a Kanji dictionary. The presentation of each Kanji incorporates a number of key features, including: Several example sentences that introduce each kanji reading in context. A list of frequently-used compounds and phrases that allows you to increase your practical vocabulary. Background information, such as the original of the character of a mnemonic to aid in memorization. Stroke count and a stroke-order diagram. Writing hints and a writing practice grid. Numerous exercises and frequent reviews for reinforcement.

Memorising kanji readings is one of the biggest hurdles when learning Japanese. The Kanji Code teaches a systematic method of learning the readings of kanji or Chinese characters. By studying phonetic components and other visual clues, students of Japanese can reduce their reliance on rote memorisation and feel more in control of their learning.

Following the first volume of Remembering the Kanji, the present work provides students with helpful tools for learning the pronunciation of the kanji. Behind the notorious inconsistencies in the way the Japanese language has come to pronounce the characters it received from China lie several coherent patterns. Identifying these patterns and arranging them in logical order can reduce dramatically the amount of time spent in the brute memorization of sounds unrelated to written forms. Many of the “primitive elements,” or building blocks, used in the drawing of the characters also serve to indicate the “Chinese reading” that particular kanji use, chiefly in compound terms. By learning one of the kanji that uses such a “signal primitive,” one can learn the entire group at the same time. In this way, Remembering the Kanji 2 lays out the varieties of phonetic pattern and offers helpful hints for learning readings, that might otherwise appear completely random, in an efficient and rational way. Individual frames cross-reference the kanji to alternate readings and to the frame in volume 1 in which the meaning and writing of the kanji was first introduced. A parallel system of pronouncing the kanji, their “Japanese readings,” uses native Japanese words assigned to particular Chinese characters. Although these are more easily learned because of the association of the meaning to a single word, the author creates a kind of phonetic alphabet of single syllable words, each connected to a simple Japanese word, and shows how they can be combined to help memorize particularly troublesome vocabulary. The 4th edition has been updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010 as “general-use” kanji.

This is an invaluable study guide for learning basic Japanese characters. Basic Japanese Kanji, Volume 1 is your introduction to the first 205 of the 410 core characters in Japanese (plus 18 additional kanji that serve as building blocks). These kanji are the most frequently used in newspapers, conversations and the top college-level beginning Japanese textbooks. Using a focused combination of proven traditional methods and unique new methods, this book will help independent learners and university or high school students to write, read, speak and use Japanese better. Basic Japanese Kanji makes studying easier by using a combination of proven traditional methods and unique new methods to learn kanji: Clear explanations of the kanji, example compounds, useful vocabulary, and extensive writing practice. Hundreds of readings with comprehension questions similar in format to those on many important national and international Japanese exams. Additional natural and level-appropriate exercises. Original mnemonics for every kanji. Key features of the downloadable CD content: Interactive software offers exam-quality practice. Gives instant feedback/correction. Extensive kanji exercises. Reading comprehension passages and questions. A set of printable kanji flash cards, for on-the-go practice.

Matthews Hamabata got off to an unpromising start when he first arrived in Japan to study influential business families. An unmarried, third-generation Japanese-American graduate student, he was there to learn about business executives in their roles as male principals and heads of households. Some Japanese were less than hospitable and often downright rude to him, and the souvenirs bearing the Harvard University emblem that he had brought along for gifts proved to be inappropriate within the highly ritualized system of Japanese gift-giving. In this engaging and personal narrative, we watch Hamabata in the first disappointing six months of his fieldwork as he attempts to map the boundaries of culture, class, and sexuality. "I became my own biggest fieldwork problem," he writes. "Was I inside or out? When I thought I was in, I was actually out, but when I acknowledged the fact that I was out, I was let in." He soon recognized the importance of marital and filial relations in transmitting power in the business world, and he began to direct his study to examining the social and emotional lives of all members of the Japanese ie (household) and the way they affect business activity and ownership. He takes us behind the scenes of the family enterprise to see how the multiple "layers of reality"--biological, social, religious, emotional, and symbolic--relate and cause dilemmas for ie members. (Names, locations, and other details have been altered for the sake of anonymity.) We meet the Moriuchis, the Itoos, the Okimotos--people who must constantly balance their own personal desires against the good of the ie. Many telling vignettes illustrate a central tension in their lives--their need for love, power, and emotional expression versus the constraints of traditional attitudes toward their ancestors, public honor, the economic enterprise, and the obligation to continue the ie over time. A grandfather stubbornly refuses to hand over the reins of succession to the next generation, creating an impossible situation that eventually tears apart an economic empire, as well as the fabric of various interrelated families. Economic, familial, and religious factors figure in a clash for succession between the person who possesses the ancestral tablets and the head of the enterprise. A daughter must reconcile personal love with arranged marriage. Ambitions for the son in line for succession war with the realization that this spoiled, incompetent young man may well ruin the ie. A fascinating portrait of everyday life told with vibrant sensitivity as well as humor, this book is full of the vitality of common concerns: life choices, love and commitment, confrontations with death. It is about very real people trying to make sense of their lives--trying to reconcile the roles and duties dictated by custom and tradition with rapidly changing expectations in the international milieu of contemporary Japan.