This award-winning series from Manga University uses original comic artwork to teach readers how to identify and write the most common Japanese kanji ideographs. Volume 1 introduces 80 basic kanji that all Japanese schoolchildren are required to learn before entering the third grade.

"A brilliant idea!" says Ronald A. Morse, retired professor of Japan Studies at UCLA and the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. "Japanese kanji — the written symbols adapted from Chinese — were originally drawings of images from real life. Japanese comic books and cartoons now provide fresh images to help us learn. Kanji de Manga uses today's manga images to make the kanji learning process fun and easy for otaku of all ages. This is a brilliant approach to learning the language."

Each page features its own comic strip, kanji pronunciation guide, stroke order, and English explanations.

Created by Glenn Kardy, editor of several volumes in the popular How to Draw Manga series, including Getting Started, the first book of its kind to be used at major universities in the United States (UCLA) and Japan (Waseda). Artwork by Chihiro Hattori, niece of legendary manga artist Eichi Fukui. Features a foreword by Tomonori Morikawa, Professor of International Studies at Waseda University, Tokyo.

Note: The digital download of this book is in PDF file format. You will need a PDF viewer installed on your computer to read the book.

Important: Use of this book requires knowledge of hiragana and katakana, the Japanese phonetic alphabets, which are taught in the book Kana de Manga. If you don't already know how to read and write kana, we recommend you start with that book first.

Learn more at the Kanji de Manga homepage!

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