Remembering the Kanji II

Remembering the Kanji II is the second in the Remembering the Kanji book series by James Heisig. Its full title is Remembering the Kanji (Volume II): A systematic guide to reading Japanese characters.

Volume II presents the official readings of the 2042 kanji introduced in Volume I.

Differences from 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.

Heisig's method

Heisig groups roughly half the kanji according to "signal primitives" that signal a certain Chinese reading. For example, 中 often signals the pronunciation chū, as it does with 仲,沖 and 忠. However, for the majority of these kanji, 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.