Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course

This is an innovative and highly effective system for learning and remembering kanji, or Sino-Japanese character. It contains all 2,136 common 'joyo' kanji, and 164 useful non-joyo kanji. They are specially arranged to maximise efficiency of acquisition. One of the title's key features is mnemonic devices - orginal stories for each kanji that teaches learners to associate graphical components with images linked to the character's meaning.

Andrew Scott Conning is a doctoral candidate and Presidential Fellow at the Harvard School of Education. He received a bachelor’s degree in languages from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in social anthropology from the Escuela National de Antropologia e Historia (Mexico). He has been active in Japan as a lecturer and university administrator, and most recently as a research scholar at the University of Tokyo.