Wired Review

Japan’s Interesting Characters

The kanji of Japan are the complex pictographs imported from China. Some of the characters are stylized representations of real stuff—you can see the trees, rivers, and ice in them. When a kanji character comprises more than one pictograph, it often makes sense, such as the ideograph for “firefly,” which combines the pictographs for “fire” and “insect.” Others are obscure, such as the character for “lunatic,” which is made up of pictographs for “dog” and “king.” (This probably comes from the mad emperor who built numerous temples to dogs and made everyone in his kingdom bow to canines and address them as honorable spirits.) “Government” is “roof” and “buttocks” (the earliest form of the phrase, “Cover your ass,’ I’ll warrant).

It’s only natural that books meant to teach kanji to English speakers often try to take advantage of the symbolic aspects of the characters. Most books that use this method fail miserably. The pictures are not consistent, and they don’t use enough of them to illustrate anything beyond a few basic ideographs. Kanji Pict-o-graphix, by Michael Rowley, is a wonderful exception. Working from the proper forms of kanji and the phonetic hiragana and katakana characters, Rowley has created a visual vocabulary that is striking and, most importantly, memorable. A friend of mine said she wished she had a book like this when learning kanji in school.

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A friend of mine said she wished she had a book like this when learning kanji in school.

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Rowley’s drawings capture the same intellectual spirit that gave birth to characters that are sometimes humorous: The character for “outside” and “undo” is comprised of “evening” and “crack,” Rowley’s drawing is of a man urinating at night. The mnemonic phrase is “He went outside and undid his pants when nature called.” And, ironically, the Japanese use the same character for both “rice” and “America,” so the mnemonic phrase is: “Japan won’t buy American rice.”

Kanji Pict-o-graphix won’t teach you Japanese, but as a companion guide to whatever you are using, it will make learning the written forms much easier. By itself it is an entertaining and insightful book for the serious and nascent Japanophile.

—Jerod Pore

This review appeared in the May 1994 issue of Wired Magazine.

Kanji Pict-o-graphix
Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics
By Michael Rowley
216 pages
8"x8"
$19.95

Buy the book from Stone Bridge Press.