Customer Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful but not as helpful as it could have been
Comment: First, let me say that I (being a student of Japanese of 2 years) love browsing through this book. The art is beautiful, the mnemonics usually make sense (except a few cases where you can tell that Rowley had a bit of a hard time thinking up mnemonics for things), and the radical categorization system is excellent.However, as a study aid, i found the value of this book is questionable. I missed being able to see how the kanjis work within a compound of kanji-kana/kanji-kana (as most words in Japanese are).
Also, while the book features a kanji and its Ohn/Kun readings, which occasionally will have a different meaning, it doesn't specify exactly which meaning corresponds with which. As someone with a limited vocabulary at this point of her studies, I learned a lot from this book, at least where reading is concerned. I COULD have learned even more from it had they bothered to add this valuable snippet of information to each item in the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Featureless faces form firm figures from Fuji-land
Comment: 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."
Customer Rating:
Summary: More Memorable Mnemonics
Comment: Another good book by Michael Rowley. I like that he presents a radical, gives it meaning, and shows it used with other radicals and their respective meanings. He also gives both the Chinese and Japanese reading for each symbol, so theorectically, this book could be used for students of Chinese as well. I find his drawings to be very helpful in remembering the symbols, because they are so interesting and memorable. He also gives a guide on how to use the entries for each kanji, and an index. He gives mnemonic devices for the kana in the beginning of the book, but they are different from the ones in Kana Pict-O-Graphix and I personally don't like them as much.
An index in which you can find the kanji for a specific english word would have been helpful, as well as notes on stroke order and creation of the characters. However, the point of this book is to remember the kanji, so Rowley probably assumes that you already know how to create the characters. He also states that he leaves out common kanji because he couldn't come up with a mnemonic device for them, and puts in kanji not approved for common use because they are interesting to him. But other than that, I would definitely recommend this book if you need help remembering the kanji.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The place to start learning Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana!
Comment: Without this book, the task of learning Kanji becomes horribly difficult.Michael Rowley takes 1250 of the 2000 basic kanji, needed for basic Japanese literacy, and breaks them down into fun, understandable pictures through which you can easily understand and memorize them. Japanese is a complex enough language WITH this book, so without this book I assume it would be boring, rote memorization of intangible Japanese graphics. Michael's organization isn't by use, but by subjects centering around radicals (smaller Kanji being parts of more complex Kanji) describing the world, people, tools, animals, the elements, numbers, motion, directions, etc. It also features a great Hiragana and Katakana picto-graphic guide up front. While not including all the combinations of the syllabic alphabets, it does give all the basic characters, pronunciations and comparable drawings allowing for easy memorization. Because of this book, Kanji seems approachable and fun. A feat none of my other text books come close to achieving even slightly.
The one fault: Mr. Rowley never put out the follow up text for the rest of the 2000 basic Kanji!! Help!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Picture Perfect (almost)
Comment: The first thing you will notice about Rowley's book is his creativity in language study. Some will surely say, "What creativity?! Kanji are already word pictures...he's just doing what's been done for thousands of years!" True. However, this book is definitely geared toward the Western reader, and Rowley's methods of memorization are sure to make Japanese study significantly easier (especially if you are American, British, Australian, etc.) More "serious" scholars will undoubtedly turn up their noses at such sophomoric scholarship. But I say: whatever works. I lived in Japan for almost two years, and this book helped me to start recognizing kanji [if you're not familiar, there are three major ways to write Japanese: hiragana = a rather easy alphabet for words native to Japan; katakana = another alphabet (with less curves and more "sharp" characters) for foreign words (mostly English words); and kanji = a group of thousands of Chinese characters that each represent an IDEA, rather than an alphabet that represents SOUNDS.]. Memorization doesn't have to be dry and boring...it can actually be fun, and Rowley definitely makes it fun. Unfortunately, a couple of the pictures/explanations are definitely off-color...but then, so is much of life.
