About

My goal with this deck was to create simple, good-looking kanji flashcards without a ton of extra information. This deck does NOT contain information on RTK or any other mnemonic systems, but does contain information about the keisei radicals. The deck is ordered based on the frequency of each kanji in the Mainichi Sinbun, as provided by the Kanji Database. You can optionally display stroke orders on the answer side of the cards by downloading and installing the KanjiStrokeOrders font here.

The script used to build this deck can be found here.

Edit 01 (2024-08-28): Update description, add missing semicolon to card styling Edit 02 (2024-08-30): Change how fonts are referenced, seed RNG for consistency across updates

Resources

The data used to generate the deck comes from three sources: the online Kanji Database and the jmdict-simplified versions of JMdict and Kanjidic2. Kanjidic2 is used for the kanji meaning and readings. JMdict is used only for the example words. Every thing else, including the list of jouyou kanji itself, comes from the Kanji Database.

Screenshots

Reasoning

I would like to expand upon the reasoning behind this deck. I have been using a mnemonic-based kanji-learning system for multiple years, and have made good progress with it. However, I have come to dislike the concept of using mnemonics to learn kanji in general. The method seems to work for a lot of people, but I personally feel that I rarely encountered situations where a mnemonic helped me remember a kanji I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Mnemonic systems also usually ignore the keisei (phonetic-semantic) composition of the majority of kanji. This composition forms the actual sematic connections between characters, and it seems counterintuitive to discard them for false connections created only for memorization.

Also, by not learning the traditional kanji radicals, it impedes one’s ability to discuss kanji with native speakers, or in Japanese in general. That’s why I decided to focus on a simpler style of learning kanji, which is the market this deck seeks to fill.