Author Description

Kanji Alchemy - Back to the Roots features a novel and original approach to learning Japanese characters with an emphasis on radicals. Organised more as a workbook than a textbook, the objective is to select a radical that is the appropriate element for a character that only lists the English translation(s) and the Japanese readings. Although the number of radicals has been limited to 96, approximately 80% of Jouyou kanji has been covered whilst through clustering of orthographically similar kanji only 1/3 of Jouyou kanji (or about 700) new forms need to be learned. There are 12 chapters of which the last 2 chapters each share 3 units related to Complementary Characters. (Complementary Characters are kanji that in addition to a previously allocated radical can take a second one. This category has been separated from the main text and features in the last two chapters of this book.) Each of the remaining other chapters contain 7 units or weeks. This design makes it easy to start with small, self-contained units as each week has 7 days that can be studied individually. Each week contains 3 sections: in the first section the task is to select the appropriate radical for the kanji. This is followed by the Answer Key that features the kanji and their respective radicals and completed by the Practice section in which the character is shown in a kanji compound.