JSLL #34 - Urashima Tarou aftermath - the kanji

Now that we've finished translating the first story "Urashima Tarou" in the book "Japanese Stories for Language Learners," let's take stock of the things we've learned. Part one of our recap focuses on the kanji.

This story introduced a whopping 130 kanji to the reader:

浦島太郎昔海辺村漁

師住心若者毎日出魚

年老父母養帰途中浜

子供集騒見小亀一匹

皆棒思生物言助手水

戻喜甲羅首足泳始底

方二三船呼声大舟来

前礼竜宮城案内背青

潜急明面珊瑚礁行向

立派門美乙姫様先遊

踊酒飲食楽話夢過配

早箱持当然玉気付決

開着変歩人知自分家

困時目白煙髭髪間地

上何百経

Kanji are often difficult to grasp for Western audiences, for multiple reasons:

First, a kanji is not "readable" like a Western letter in the sense that it doesn't have single pronunciation, and sometimes can't even be individually pronounced if it occurs among other kanji. Take the word 今日 for example, which means "today." The first kanji is pronounced いま (ima) on its own, and こん (kon) in many kanji combos. The second one is pronounced ひ (hi) on its own, and にち (nichi) in many combinations. So how is 今日 pronounced? As きょう (kyou), a reading that couldn't possibly be predicted on the basis of the two individual kanji. In this case, there's no point in trying to figure out how the first character is pronounced or how the second one is pronounced: It's only the combination that's pronounced.

Second, a kanji does not have a set meaning. While it's true that a kanji on its own means something, the meanings of the words in which the kanji appears can have nothing at all to do with the meaning of the sole kanji. The bottom line: words have a meaning, kanji don't. If you see in the dictionary that 足 means "leg, foot," remember that they're talking about the word 足, not the kanji 足.

Third, there are many, many kanji, but you don't need to memorize all of them, nor all of them at the same time. The best approach when confronted with a new kanji is to ask these questions:

• Is this a kanji for beginners, for intermediate learners, for advanced learners? This is expressed well through its N level (N5 = beginners, N1 = native speaker)
• How common is this kanji in text? This is expressed fairly well by checking in how many common words it occurs.

Kanji are hard to memorize. Use mnemonics to do so. Don't overanalyze them or fall into the trap of thinking that knowing the kanji equals knowing Japanese. Most importantly, learn words, not kanji.