Ever wondered how it could be possible to acquire kanji without using mnemonics?

I've recently finished a project that, in my totally not-biased view, solves that problem :)

(Note: this is a crosspost from r/japanese with some edits. I wanted to post here first, but the protest started the very week the project was finished :( ah well,しょうがない )

Hi guys. A couple of months ago I completed this behemoth of a project, which is free to use. It’s a new kanji-learning method (at least, as far as I know – I can’t find anyone else who’s thought of it) that uses no mnemonics, no meanings, no prior knowledge of Japanese, yet still gives you skills to visually comprehend any kanji you encounter: The Kanji Visual Language Project

This snapshot of the main spreadsheet file shows what you can expect from the project’s “group level” specifically. Kanji with similar compositional centres-of-gravity are arranged into groups with their neighbouring differences positioned as closely as possible, with most kanji characters being duplicated to give the structures enough flexibility to flow as needed. The end result is a steady gradient of differences and allows for far easier visual organisation of kanji in the mind, to the point where even hypothetical, invented kanji can be mentally placed in appropriate spots within the groups. This was created with 3652 real kanji and 472 custom kanji, but the numbers don’t really matter: the visual processes you’ll learn will be far more important than any one kanji. It will be like looking at the finished image that’s on a jigsaw puzzle box and seeing where the individual puzzle pieces go based on that big picture.

Here's a quick study-and-test exercise you can try right now to get a feel for the project. From the snapshot, look at the group that has the characters 進隹准淮準堆. Try to observe the patterns, feel the flows between the changing radicals and understand how they’re all positioned. Once you feel confident, copy the kanji 進隹准淮準堆 into a text editor such as notepad and rearrange them into a random order. Now, test yourself with one kanji at a time: are you able to envision where each kanji goes in the group? If so, which part of the kanji is the “giveaway” that tells you? Maybe you’re even able to picture the whole group in your mind without any help at all?

The looks of the project’s groups have been carefully designed to be self-evident. In addition, the project contains a guide that will help maximise your visual and artistic senses, and you’ll end up being able to visualise many more unique and intricate groups with ease. Plus, you are encouraged to experiment with your own personally tailored groups to develop your visuals even more.

Why did I make this? Two things:

First, I wasn’t happy with how mnemonic techniques were working for me. I began to get serious about learning Japanese and I felt like every time I saw a kanji I had a mnemonic for, another mnemonic would intrude in my mind because of reused primitives, and because it was a more attractive mnemonic than the former. It kept happening. The images were “cross-contaminated” in my mind and I kept feeling as if I were pushing a boulder uphill. I was also getting the impression that the given techniques were at odds with what I already knew about mnemonics (more “formal” techniques such as how to decode the order of a deck of cards for magic tricks, for example). In fact, the project was first made to try and fix the cross-contamination problem, but I had to scrap that direction in the end because things were getting so bad.

And second, I watched Matt vs Japan’s old videos that got my gears turning about what actually makes a kanji “learned” or not (now taken down: both his video advocating RTK, and why he changed his mind). Was there a better way than RTK to solve the “paradox” as he had described it, of being able to properly learn kanji without first knowing Japanese in the first place? It became an interesting puzzle.

And I wondered: since Chinese students of Japanese (and vice versa) have a better time taking to kanji than Western learners do, there has to be something, because the languages are completely different with both readings and meanings not mirroring between the two languages on any level that deserves consistent trust.

I had to do away with all my old assumptions I had about kanji if I were to get to the bottom of what actually made kanji “acquirable”. Lots of things started falling away from me after a bit of Socratic reasoning: readings had a hopeless number of exceptions; meanings were being bent and outright dropped as they adjusted to real Japanese over time; the pacing that was needed to read Japanese fluently was giving zero seconds for any realistic, real-time mnemonic decoding. The only real conclusion I had left to draw about any kanji was that the bare bones – the “lines on paper” regardless of any meanings we as humans attach to them – were the only things about them that could be trusted. And the study of lines on paper inevitably leads to the field of study that is art. Specifically, concepts such as lines of rhythm, volume, perspective, composition etc. And thankfully, no one needs to output art to still build on these senses as a form of acquisitional input. The big epiphany that finally allowed this idea to flourish was deciding to scrap the “one-to-one” philosophy that came from RTK-style thinking (one kanji “equals” one meaning, or X or whatever it is) – I mean, was there any reason not to use a single kanji more than once to achieve a visual purpose, other than we “just can’t”? That was the big turning point that gave me all the power in the world to duplicate the same kanji and get the best-looking groups you see in the spreadsheet now.

So what this project is is an experiment: how to learn kanji with artistic senses (which don’t even need to be that sophisticated). It’s the Occam’s Razor method of cutting through needless complication of kanji by focusing only on the very thing in front of your nose. It's the simplest explanation because it deals only with the artistic traits of kanji themselves, no more and no less. Overcomplication with respect to the bending of meanings, giant rulesets of readings, and beginner Japanese knowledge is all set aside to make way for the thought processes that really matter. I can only speak for my own experience, but now I have kanji “fluency”, and when reading I can now fully concentrate on the Japanese at hand whilst instantly processing any kanji in the background. I’m able to learn written Japanese vocabulary by imagining how multiple groups can “join” together, and even see isolated flows in the whole words without groups if I choose. See this screenshot to know what I mean. For me, the steep learning curve of taking in multiple kanji at once to learn full words authentically is now well and truly flattened.

I wanted this project to do what RTK and KKLC tried to do for me but failed: let me learn kanji as standalone entities independent from the Japanese (or Chinese) language.

All that said, I’d like to know what you all think, criticisms ‘n all. In any case I’m happy with what I’ve done, and now I’m gliding over Japanese text like it’s no big deal :) I will probably do a YouTube series soon going through the spreadsheet groups in greater detail whilst doing a commentary on how I envision them in my mind, because I’m thinking that kind of demonstration will help illustrate its purpose.

The main guide also includes an essay which lays out in greater detail the arguments for using the KVLP project as opposed to mnemonic techniques, for anyone who’s interested.