Review of The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji by Gerald B. Mathias

Six chapters cover: 1, rules of stroke order; 2, about 150 simple "basic" kanji, with early forms, showing development from pictures or abstract symbols; 3, kanji that combine semantic elements; 4, characters containing phonetic elements; 5, kun-yomi, okurigana, ateji, proper names; 6, rules (and lots of examples) of kango formation. Indexes by stroke count and by reading.

It tries to show the "best" hypothesis for how each of the Kanji originated, and is usually quite revealing, but it often finds itself embarrassedly noting that a character started out as A + B but has been completely replaced by C which used to have a totally different meaning, or the original meaning which follows clearly (or maybe not) from D + E has utterly changed over the last 4000 years.

A slightly updated version is available in French as _Manuel Des Kanji Usuels_ (L'Asiate^que, Paris, 1994).

☆ See all reviews by Gerald B. Mathias.