Thoughts on books that teach kanji by breaking down kanji into radicals

Tatsumoto, what are your thoughts on more specific books claiming to teach kanji, like ones that break down kanji into radicals, or ones that teach through illustrations? Are all of them inherently bad?

Kanji books help you develop kanji fluency initially. You learn to recognize kanji and tell them apart. But you outgrow them quickly. They help when you first start learning to read, but as your brain starts to recognize characters as whole units, you forget what those books teach.

Kanji books

Kanji books break kanji into components and assign mnemonics or stories to each piece. These books teach kanji in isolation. You learn to recognize each character and recall a keyword.

However, with these books you don't learn how to read the kanji in actual words. If you learn 個 means "individual" but can't read 個人 or 一個, then you haven't really learned the kanji. So typically, after you finish a kanji book, you start learning to read real Japanese with targeted sentence cards.

Beginner kanji books for foreigners help you learn to recognize kanji and tell them apart. They teach you that kanji aren't just random scribbles, and that each component has a purpose. However, you outgrow those techniques pretty quickly. When you're fluent in reading Japanese, it feels like riding a bike. Your brain wants to learn the shortest path to reading in Japanese, so it becomes automatic. The more you read, the more you forget what the kanji books teach and what those radicals are.

If you skip kanji books and just do Ankidrone Foundation, you'll learn kanji organically through exposure. Then, through practicing reading and mining sentences, reading kanji will become automatic. This saves you the time you'd otherwise spend learning kanji in isolation. Your brain doesn't need that extra knowledge about radicals and components.

Radical knowledge is useful

That said, knowing kanji radicals in Japanese is helpful and handy. It will improve your immersion experience, as Japanese people often describe kanji in terms of their parts. However, beginner books for foreigners don't teach the radical names in Japanese, so they're not helpful. They teach you that 氵 is "water" or "three drops". What you actually need to know is that it's called さんずい.

Isolated kanji study leads to poor retention

When you learn kanji as isolated units with English keywords using the SRS, you create memories with no real context to anchor them to. As you start reading native Japanese texts, the memories of the isolated characters fade away. Your brain starts to store kanji as parts of words, not as abstract symbols. When you encounter 食 in the context of 食べる, 食事, or 食堂, each encounter reinforces the kanji from a different angle.

Eventually, your SRS kanji cards become unbearably difficult to review because the SRS is the only place where you see kanji in isolation. Kanji cards start wasting your time, and you have to delete your kanji deck entirely.

Sentence mining and targeted sentence cards solve the kanji problem because they teach kanji in context. Every new kanji you encounter is attached to a real word in a real sentence that you pulled from your immersion.