The definitive guide to learning 2,200 kanji

I've wanted to learn Japanese for a very long time, but everytime I ended up failing.

Why was this the case? I attribute the failure to having the wrong learning technique. Quite often in life the solution isn't to "just work harder", but rather to identify the correct configuration you need to make learning easier—and after that you start working harder than everyone else.

The first step I took was finding a Japanese tutor, and I specifically wanted to find a tutor who is both capable and non-Japanese. Then, you'll be able to avoid common pitfalls as you're learning from someone who's already traversed the full path and probably save a couple hundred hours or more.

With that said, you can spend 1,000 hours Duolingo and make zero progress, or you can spend 1,000 hours on an approach that's proven and actually learn Japanese.

Remembering the Kanji

I used to fade Remembering the Kanji (abbr. RtK) by James Heisig in the past when I had no guidence into learning Japanese. But now that I've finished the book in 3 months, I'd say drop every other method and just go with RtK.

If you're going to finish RtK in 2 years, one could argue it's not worth it, but if you can finish it in a couple months, then I don't see why one shouldn't complete it as a first step.

The idea that Heisig had is logical in nature—to breakdown all kanji into smaller components, called radicals, which are then memorized and used to build up the actual kanji. Similarly to what the atom is for a molecule, the radical is for the kanji.

But to enchance the technique further, we don't do rote memorization for which radicals a kanji is composed of, but instead create stories for each kanji and its radicals. The quickest way to explain it would be to just show it.

ID	English meaning	Kanji	Radicals	Story
283	place	所	door (戸), axe (斤)	Before heading into a place, you need to leave the axe at the door.
1208	logic	理	king (王), computer (里)	The computer is the king of logic.
1467	continue	続	spiderman (糸), sell (売)	If you see a man wearing a Spiderman costume and trying to sell you something, you just continue forward.

This is a scalable and efficient way of remembering the kanji, and using this technique you can remember all 2,200 in about 1.5 months if you'd wanted to.

I also strongly recommended a piece of software called Koohii (it's free) when going through RtK. I only learned about it recently myself from my tutor when I started, and I've found it incredibly useful.

Koohii is a website with flashcards, like Anki, but it is specifically tailored for RtK and streamlines the experience for the user. By far the most useful feature is user's shared stories on the website. So if you end up stuck on a kanji or radical (which will happen often), you can take inspiration and learnings from everyone else who've gone through it. Turns RtK into a crowdsourced multiplayer game which is greatly beneficial for everyone involved.

Statistics

In total it took me exactly 3 months and 2 days to go through 2,200 kanji—from 26 May 2025 to 28 Aug 2025. I'm decently happy with the result given I have a full-time job, and spent about a few hours a day. Some days I added more cards, some days I added none. You always want to make sure you review all cards though, but even then I had a few days where I only reviewed half of what was Due (not ideal at all, but not the end of the world either).

Below I'll drop a table with some interesting statistics from my experience.

Label	Statistic
Total time	95 days
Total cards	2,200
Total reviews	18,695
Average new kanji per day	23,158... new kanji per day
Most new kanji in a single day	200 (yes, exactly 200 with about ~70% recall the next day)
Estimated average recall (going by intuition)	60% - 70%

I'm sure I could've averaged 100 kanji a day if grinding kanji was the singular thing I did everyday, with no other responsibilities. Given my circumstances, I'm sure I could've averaged 50 kanji a day if I worked harder, but regardless I think this is decent.

Dispelling myths with Remembering the Kanji

I started RtK in 26 May, 2025, but this wasn't the first time I heard about the technique. So why did I fade it in the past? There are three main reasons why I faded RtK in the past:

Assumption 1: Learning to write the kanji by hand is a waste of time (we have computers today).

Learning to write the kanji helps recalling the kanji, and doesn't take much more effort in actuality (perceived difficulty in learning to write kanji is overstated, it's very easy to learn). Learning the correct stroke order was zero added effort as well, and if anything, made the learning process smoother.

Assumption 2: RtK only teaches you the English meaning, not the Japanese reading or how it's used in actual vocabulary! That's a problem.

Only learning the English meaning is a non-issue. If you are a computer scientist, you know divide and conquer is a very effective way to problem-solve. You can definitively learn the Japanese reading and vocavulary later.

Assumption 3: Anki flashcards that go from kanji → English word is better than Koohii's approach of English word → kanji.

This isn't a problem at all. Even if you practise the inverse direction of English word → kanji, you will be able to parse kanji → meaning later without a problem.

Dispelling the 20 kanji a day efficiency cap

To dispell another myth related to learning kanji: the belief that learning efficiency caps at ~20 kanji per day. I think that's a undoubtedly false statement. The emperical example is that I went through 200 myself (and I'm sure other people have done similar numbers greater than a mere 20 kanji).

There's also an intuitive argument one could make against the "20 kanji learning cap". Imagine that you binge-watch a 24 episode anime in a day. You are presented with an incredible amount of information, and somehow you are still able to recall what happened after you've watched it. I'm not going to go into why that's the case, as the point is that it is the case.

Reasoning by analogy, then remembering 20 kanji seems like childs play from an information density point-of-view. Hence, the issue is not in the amount of information presented when learning kanji, but in how that information is processed and stored in memory. So don't do rote memorization for kanji, remember them by attaching a story.

The learning loop

If you've thought about the process of learning, you might have stumbled upon the idea that you need a loop that you can run over and over again to gain mastery in a subject.

In this section, I want to present the loop in a semi-rigorous way to avoid possible discrepencies when someone is learning using RtK and Koohii. There's a lot of tacit knowledge that's required in making sure you're learning efficiently, as every loop will be slightly different depending on the kanji. It definitely took me at least a few weeks to a month to get a coherent view of the details and caveats of the approach that RtK presents.

That aside, here's the loop.

1. Review any Due cards from yesterday
   1. If you manage to write the kanji easily, press Easy
   2. If you manage to write the kanji, press Yes
   3. If you manage to write the kanji but was hard, press Hard (will move it to tomorrow)
   4. If you didn't manage to write the kanji, press Again
   5. If you didn't manage to write the kanji and find the kanji difficult, press No (will move it to re-study, for the really difficult ones)
   6. Cards that was Again:ed should be finished with Hard
2. After you have reviewed the Due cards, add New cards from where you left off
   1. Find where you left off
   2. Think of a story for the kanji (feel free to use other people's story as inspiration)
   3. Write the kanji once (and recall the story as you write the kanji)
   4. Go to next kanji
3. Continue adding as many kanji as you'd like, but I'd say cap it at 100 per day
   1. Review the kanji that were added for the day until you are able to write them
   2. Always press Hard for the new kanji (this will add them to the queue for tomorrow)
   3. Any kanji that did not stick well, make a new story during review or re-study them

While this is the core loop of how you learn the 2,200 kanji, it does not shed light on the all intricacies and adjustments you'll likely have to make. I will list try and list some of the learnings, guidelines and other experiments I tried while I was learning.

Guidelines

General guidelines

• Cap at 100 kanji a day, because more than that and the review load becomes exhausting. But if you have time go ahead. If you have a job, 50 new kanji a day is doable. The problem with 100 kanji a day is that reviews can get out of hand, not only are you adding more time to making new cards, but you will also be adding more time when reviewing.
• Make sure you review the Due cards everyday, even if you don't add any new cards.
• Use the No button to catch oftenly failed cards. If you keep failing a card, your memory probably isn't the issue. Problem-solve and figure out what causes you to fail, and solve it.
• Ensure you write with the correct stroke order.
• Use the search query <kanji> stroke order in Google to check the stroke order in a fast way, and click on https://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/....
• Use the search query https://jisho.org/search/<kanji> to find the meaning of the kanji if the English word is confusing. Some English words can mean different things. Take the word current, it could mean "current" as in now, or it could mean "current" as in a water current.
• If you change the meaning of an English word, I do it in the following format: <word> (<alt_1>, <alt_2>) or <word> (explanation).
• Some of the radical suggestions in Koohii are exceptionally good.

Story guidelines

• The best story is the story that naturally fits in your brain (personalization is key).
• Look at other user's stories if you can't come up with any story.
• Avoid inverse stories.
• Avoid stories with too many details or are confusing.
• If a radical's or kanji's meaning is vague, make it concrete.
  • 糸 is spiderman instead of thread.
  • 善 is jesus instead of virtuous when used as a radical.
  • 羊 + 我 in 儀 is ego sheep.
• Try drawing the story as a single frame if it is fuzzy in your mind.
  • If you have aphantasia, I don't know what the experience will be like when you go through RtK. I don't have aphantasia.
• Change meaning of the radical if Heisig's is not good, but ensure that it does not clash with any existing radicals.
  • Make sure it fits well with the group of kanji that it is used for.

Failed experiments

• Using ChatGPT to make stories does not work well, stories from Koohii are much better.
• The link method from The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne did not work better than Heisig's method (they are kind of similar although).
• Changing the Spaced Repetition Settings did not help.
• Copy-pasting stories from Koohii did not work, I had to write them out.

Structure

After grinding RtK for 3 months, inherent structures will show itself as you go along. Nothing surprising, but it isn't really listed in the RtK book or on the Koohii site, so could be good to know before diving in.

List of changed radicals

This is not an exhaustive list of all radical changes I made. It would take a long time to remember them all, so will it short for illustrative purposes only.

Radical	Initial word	Changed word	Reasoning
罒	eye	lurking eye	Usually used in darker kanji
⽉	flesh, moon	body part, moon	Used in so many body parts, so I just call it body part
⺨	pack of dogs	wild dog	-
貝	shellfish	money	Comes up a lot in money situations
⾔	say, talk, word	Socrates	Socrates has a lot of writing, so kind of makes sense
⼃ + ⾍	gnats	ladybug	Gnats to uncommon of a word for me
羊 + 我	-	ego sheep	Comes up often, so I made up ego sheep myself
⺌ + ⼍ + ⼝	outhouse	-	I just sort of remembered it, never thinking outhouse on this one
⺅	person	stickman	A generic stickman
州	state	io-state	Looks like 101010, so I'm thinking a computer state
京	capital	Tokyo	-
⼜	crouch	guy legs	This one is used for guy (奴), and there are already many legs, so might as well introduce another type of legs
⻏_	-	The Pinnacle	"The Pinnacle" is some kind of nightclub or something
_⻏	-	Attack on Titan walls	Works very well
共	together	Noah's Ark	-
⽷	thread	Spiderman	-
⽂	sentence	Minecraft Enchantment Table	It looks like an enchantment table
⾨	gates	Airport Security Gates	-
岡	Mount	Mount Everest and Mount Fuji	-
⾠	sign of the dragon	bruce lee	Bruce Lee with dragon is easy to remember

List of clashing cards/words

Some of the kanji/words are similar in meaning, so they often got mixed up. It is important to search for the definition and understand the differences between the words. When you make stories for the pairs or triplets below, ensure that the stories are distinct from each other.

• engrave, carve
• apprehend, arrest, intercept
• envy, envious, jealous
• steadily, gradually
• transmit
• resentment, regret
• welcome, introduce
• quiet, silence
• aggression, achievement,
• revered, renowned
• repel, repress
• grant, stipend
• pure, purification
• difference, contrast, difficult
• ceremony, celebration, congratulations
• unusual, uncommon
• distract, disturb
• mechanism, contraption
• hometown, home country
• glossy, polish
• lowly, lower
• gulf, bay
• intimidate, threaten
• marriage, surname
• thick, plump
• provisions, provisional
• buearou, establishment
• pick, choose, pick up
• investigate, inspect

Other structures

Groups

It is possible to create subsets for both the radicals and the kanji. Similarly, this will not be an exhaustive list and will be for illustrative purposes only. Heisig emergently creates groups, but never concretely states them. You can decide to expand upon his groups or create brand new ones.

Group	Radicals
Legs (Heisig)	⼉ (human legs), ⼡ (walking legs), ⼜ (guy legs)
Heros (Non-Heisig)	糸 (spiderman), [top of ⻘] (peter pan), 寅 (tigger from winnie the pooh)
Anime & Games (Non-Heisig)	鬼 (ghost in the shell), ⽂ (minecraft enchantment table), _⻏ (inside the AoT walls)
Physics & Computers (Non-Heisig)	穴 (black hole), 兼 (CPU concurrency)
Villains (Non-Heisig)	㑒 (frankenstein), ⺍ + 凶 (owl villain),

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To everyone that finished Remembering the Kanji 1, お疲れ!