Japanese Kanji Power. John Millen

      Introduction

      About this book

      This book is designed for students of the Japanese language interested in developing their reading and writing proficiency. Over the years, the popularity of studying Japanese has grown steadily and, at the same time, the number of textbooks and other resources available has also increased. Due to the continued interest in materials to assist learners with the written language, I decided, in consultation with the editors at Tuttle Publishing, that the original Kanji Power would benefit from a complete revision. As a result, this new version of the book is greatly expanded from the original and will, it is hoped, prove to be easier to use and more accessible to beginning students of the language.

      The Scope of the Text

      There are certain key aspects of the original text that have been preserved in this revision. The number of target characters, though, has been nearly doubled to 464 kanji. This incorporates all the characters included in the first two grades of the kyōiku kanji, being the 240 characters studied in Grades 1 and 2 of Japanese elementary school.

      Many readers may wish to use this book to help prepare for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). For this reason, the book covers all the characters you will need to know for the new Level N5 (103 characters) and Level N4 (an additional 181 kanji ) tests, as well as many of those required for Levels N2 and N3. Note that the JLPT switched from 4 to 5 levels in 2010. New levels N4 and N5 were formerly Levels 3 and 4 and merely underwent a name change. The new level N3 exam was introduced at the same time.

      In addition, you may wish to use this book to help prepare for the Advanced Placement (AP) Japanese Language and Culture Examination, or as a supplemental resource for university-level Japanese courses. This book includes all 410 kanji recommended for study for the AP Japanese test. Moreover, since the AP Japanese kanji were selected based on the frequency of their inclusion in the leading 1st- and 2nd-year Japanese textbooks used by colleges and universities, learning the AP kanji will also be highly relevant to those studying the language in such courses.

      In fact, given that the 464 kanji introduced herein are the most important and commonly seen kanji that you will find in everyday reading materials, mastering these kanji will take you a long way towards fluency in reading and writing Japanese.

      The Layout of the Text

      The book has been divided into three sections or ‘parts’. Each part has then been sub-divided into a number of sets, with 12 target kanji for each set.

      The table located on the inside covers is provided to allow quick access to specific characters.

      An important aspect of the presentation of characters herein is that, within each part of the book, the characters appear in order of ascending number of strokes. Characters with the same number of strokes appear according to their on-yomi, or Chinese reading, and are arranged according to the Japanese a-i-u-e-o order.

      My