Remembering the Kanji is a three-volume series of books by James Heisig, intended to teach the writing and reading of 3,000 of the most frequently-used Kanji to students of the Japanese language. The series defines a strategy of kanji learning, informally known as the "Heisig method," which emphasizes a combination of mnemonic methods (dubbed "imaginative memory" by Heisig) and a study of kanji in a compositional order, using simpler character components (which the series calls "primitive elements") to construct more complex characters.[1][2] While the original volume deals exclusively with teaching the meaning and writing of Japanese characters, the second volume, Remembering the Kanji 2, published in 1987, attempts to extend the method to the pronunciation of characters.[3] A third volume, Remembering the Kanji 3 (1994), applies the original method "to introduce additional characters useful for upper-level proficiency."[4]
The first volume, originally published in 1978 as Adventures in Kanji-Land, has gone through six editions, and has subsequently been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Italian, and Hebrew.[2][5]
Heisig later wrote a supplementary series, Remembering the Hiragana (1987) and Remembering the Katakana (1990), which teach the Japanese syllabaries (hiragana and katakana, respectively). These were subsequently combined into Remembering the Kana (2002).[6][7] In collaboration with Timothy W. Richardson, Heisig also released Remembering the Hanzi, intended to teach the 3000 most frequent Hanzi to students of the Chinese language. This book has two variants: Remembering Simplified Hanzi and Remembering Traditional Hanzi, each in two volumes.[8][9]