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Remembering the Kanji is a three-volume series of books by James Heisig, intended to teach the writing and reading of 3,000 of the most frequently-used Kanji to students of the Japanese language. The series defines a strategy of kanji learning, informally known as the "Heisig method," which emphasizes a combination of mnemonic methods (dubbed "imaginative memory" by Heisig) and a study of kanji in a compositional order, using simpler character components (which the series calls "primitive elements") to construct more complex characters. While the original volume deals exclusively with teaching the meaning and writing of Japanese characters, the second volume, Remembering the Kanji 2, published in 1987, attempts to extend the method to the pronunciation of characters. A third volume, Remembering the Kanji 3 (1994), applies the original method "to introduce additional characters useful for upper-level proficiency."

The first volume, originally published in 1978 as Adventures in Kanji-Land, has gone through six editions, and has subsequently been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Italian, and Hebrew.

Heisig later wrote a supplementary series, Remembering the Hiragana (1987) and Remembering the Katakana (1990), which teach the Japanese syllabaries (hiragana and katakana, respectively). These were subsequently combined into Remembering the Kana (2002). In collaboration with Timothy W. Richardson, Heisig also released Remembering the Hanzi, intended to teach the 3000 most frequent Hanzi to students of the Chinese language. This book has two variants: Remembering Simplified Hanzi and Remembering Traditional Hanzi, each in two volumes.

Methodology
The method differs markedly from traditional rote-memorization techniques practiced in most courses. The course teaches the student to utilize all the constituent parts of a kanji's written form—termed "primitives", combined with a mnemonic device that Heisig refers to as "imaginative memory". Each kanji (and each non-kanji primitive) is assigned a unique keyword. A kanji's written form and its keyword are associated by imagining a scene or story connecting the meaning of the given kanji with the meanings of all the primitives used to write that kanji. The method requires the student to invent their own stories to associate the keyword meaning with the written form. The text presents detailed stories in Part I, proceeding through Part II with less verbose stories. This is to encourage the student to use the stories as practice for creating their own. After the 547 kanji in Parts I and II, the remainder of the kanji in Part III have the component keywords but no stories. However, in cases where the reader may be easily confused or for difficult kanji, Heisig often provides a small story or hint.

All the kanji are analyzed by components—Heisig terms these "primitives"—which may be traditional radicals, other kanji themselves, or a collection of strokes not normally identified as independent entities. The basic primitives are introduced as needed throughout the book. This order is designed to introduce the kanji efficiently by building upon the primitives and kanji already learned, rather than learning the kanji based on the order of their frequency or the dictates of the jōyō kanji grading system. In volume 2, Heisig groups roughly half the kanji according to "signal primitives" that signal a certain Chinese reading (cf radical). There will be one or more exceptions to this rule. These are presented by Heisig in an increasing order of difficulty. The remainder of the Chinese readings are introduced in separate chapters, designed to help the student learn the readings from everyday words and useful compounds.

Remembering the Kanji 1
Remembering the Kanji 1: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters

The first book in the series, commonly known as RTK1, was originally published in 1977. In the book, Heisig presents a method for learning how to associate the meaning and writing of 2,200 kanji, including most of the jōyō kanji. There is no attention given to the readings of the kanji as Heisig believes that one should learn the writing and meaning first before moving on to the readings in Volume II. The sixth edition was released in April 2011.

The book's sixth edition, published in 2011, includes corrections for all errata from prior editions, as well as additional kanji from the 2010 significant revision to the Jōyō kanji. The additional kanji in the sixth edition have also been made into a supplement for use with older editions. Likewise, RTK2 and RTK3 have been updated in 2012 to reflect these changes.

Remembering the Kanji 2
''Remembering the Kanji 2: A Systematic Guide to Reading Japanese Characters"

The second book in the series, often referred to as RTK2, is the second in the Remembering the Kanji. Volume II presents the official readings of the kanji introduced in Volume I.

Unlike the first volume, this book does not rely on "imaginative memory". The book is mainly focused on the Chinese readings, however one chapter does suggest a mnemonic device for learning the Japanese readings. Heisig splits the kanji into various chapters, according to the most appropriate method to learn their readings. For each Chinese reading of a kanji, an example compound word is given.

Remembering the Kanji 3
The third book, commonly referred to as RTK3, is the third in the Remembering the Kanji book series by James Heisig. This volume was co-authored by Tanya Sienko.

Volume 3 presents a further 800 kanji in addition to the 2,200 kanji introduced in Volume 1 and Volume 2. It is split into two parts. The first part is in the style of Volume I, where the writing and keywords are learned. The majority of the new kanji are introduced according to their traditional radical. The other part is in a similar style to Volume 2, where the readings of the kanji are learned.

Enju Norris of Griffith University reviewed RTK3 for Asian Studies Review in 2010 as "a rich reference for teachers who seek more effective, rational, engaging and fun methods to help students learn without resorting to the repetitive rote method of learning.

Remembering the Kana
Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 hours each (Combined edition) is a book by James Heisig for remembering hiragana and katakana. It uses mostly the same imaginative memory technique as Remembering the Kanji I, though some katakana are prompted to be learned as simplified forms of their hiragana counterparts.

Remembering the Kana succeeds the book Remembering the Hiragana: A Complete Course on How to Teach Yourself the Japanese Syllabary in 3 Hours, (75 pages. 10th printing, 1999,) which only taught the hiragana (and not the katakana).

Remembering the Hanzi
Heisig and Timothy Richardson have also written Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1 (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2009) and Remembering Traditional Hanzi 1, which apply the same method to Chinese. Volume 2 of each book was published in early 2012.

Reception
Since its publication, Remembering the Kanji has received both praise and criticism from students, teachers and academics.

Reviewing Remembering Simplified Hanzi and Remembering Traditional Hanzi in the Modern Language Journal, Dr. Li Jin of Purdue University wrote that "the approach deployed in the books is successful" and that "there is no doubt that [new] users can develop high proficiency in understanding and writing the characters included in the books." She cautioned however that "it is doubtful whether it is practical for learners of Chinese to use the methods promoted in the books for advanced-level character learning" and expressed "reservations about recommending to learners of Chinese who have been studying Chinese characters with pronunciation and those who aim to understand or compose a text for more practical purposes." Jin's reservations centered on several related criticisms of the method. She expressed concern about the possibility of users extending the mnemonic/compositional strategy of the book to erroneously "understanding any new character composed based on the meaning of elements comprising the character" when "in most situations, the phonetic part has nothing to do with the meaning of the characters," and for the same reason felt it "may not be as efficient as a traditional phonetic association" system of character learning." Finally, she argued that because "many modern Chinese characters are morphemes rather than individual words [...] learners may risk missing the character's contextual meanings" by studying them in isolation."

In a summary of his dissertation on Heisig's system, Richardson notes that "the strength of the theoretical and empirical justification for using a system such as Heisig's (1986) for character memorization seems to be very strong."

Linguist John Pasden, discussing his own successful use of Heisig's system, described it as a "triumph of imagination over rote learning" which "totally changed the way I approach characters."

Japan-based American comedian Atsugiri Jason (ja:厚切りジェイソン) cited Remembering the Kanji as the study method which allowed for his own kanji proficiency.

A common criticism of compositional ordering in general is that by "delaying the study of common words in favour of much rarer words with known components, [students] may end up with a larger vocabulary, but it may not serve them as well as a smaller vocabulary of more appropriately chosen words."

Academics Loach & Wang have noted that experimental studies support the idea that a "learning order that explicitly reflects orthographic principles is more likely to generate accurate and productive orthographic awareness in students." However, examining Remembering the Hanzi in particular, they argue that while Heisig and Richardson's sequencing of characters is founded in "sound educational principles", these "pedagogical advantages [...] are not fully realized because of the absence of phonetic information and their deliberate strategy of assigning semantic values to all components, whether or not this is etymologically correct."

There is currently a lack of controlled, published studies directly analyzing the effectiveness of Remembering the Kanji and related instructional approaches. However, Hayashida Toshiko of the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation described the strategy of successful test-takers of the Kanji Kentei (which at its highest level tests over 6000 Kanji) as a "two-stage process" in which they first "learn the meaning of a character — to take a basic example, 犬 is 'dog.' Once they have that fixed in their mind, they learn the various readings." In recent years, even more conventional Japanese education texts have also adopted some part of the mnemonic/compositional technique, such as Eri Banno et al.'s Kanji Look and Learn(2009). Alongside traditional stroke orders and readings, this textbook also provides what it calls "mnemonic hints" intended to "allow the user to form a mental link between the kanji's form and meaning, making it easier to remember them."