7 Memory Techniques That Actually Help You Learn Kanji

Memzle Blog · How we teach vocabulary ·

Kanji can feel like memorizing thousands of unrelated little pictures, one grind at a time. It isn't, really. Most of what makes kanji hard to retain is the same predictable memory problem that affects any vocabulary, and it responds to the same handful of techniques.

Here are seven, roughly in order of how much evidence backs them. The first two have the strongest research behind them by far; the rest are useful additions with less direct evidence.

7 kanji memory techniques, and the evidence behind each

  1. Spaced repetition. Review a character again just as you're starting to forget it, with the gaps growing longer each time you get it right. This directly counters the forgetting curve Hermann Ebbinghaus documented in the 1880s, where most new material fades within a day without review. A major 2013 review of study techniques gave spaced practice its highest rating (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
  2. Active recall, not re-reading. Test yourself: cover the meaning or reading and try to produce it, instead of looking the character over again. Practice testing earned the same top rating in that 2013 review, while rereading was rated low. Recognizing a kanji and recalling it are different skills, and only recall practice trains recall.
  3. Keyword mnemonics for readings. Link the sound of a word's reading to its meaning through a small, vivid image, the technique covered in our beginner's guide. Studies since the 1970s show it speeds up initial learning of foreign vocabulary a lot. On its own, though, it doesn't guarantee long-term retention, which is why the 2013 review rated it low as a stand-alone technique. Use it to get a word in fast, then let techniques 1 and 2 keep it there.
  4. Dual coding: pair the character with a picture. This is the principle underneath keyword images, and it applies more broadly. When you store something both verbally and visually, you have two retrieval paths instead of one, so a fading verbal memory can still be pulled back by the visual one.
  5. Component (radical) breakdown. Most kanji are built from a smaller set of recurring pieces, and many combine a part that hints at the meaning with a part that hints at the sound. Learning what each piece tends to contribute lets you recognize patterns across hundreds of characters instead of memorizing each one as a brand-new shape.
  6. Writing by hand. Producing a character stroke by stroke adds motor memory to visual memory. In one study, writing Chinese characters by hand improved later recognition compared with only looking at them, for both children and adults (Guan et al., 2021). It's slower than tapping, but if you want to write kanji, nothing replaces it.
  7. The story method with recurring building blocks. Instead of one isolated image per character, give each recurring component a fixed "character" and combine them into a short story. This is the approach popularized by James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, and I've seen it work first-hand in a course that taught Arabic letters and grammar the same way. Recognizing one part of the story cues the rest. It's less formally studied than the techniques above, but it builds directly on component breakdown and dual coding.

Which of these should you actually use?

These seven aren't competing options; they stack. A mnemonic image (3) gives you something memorable to encode in the first place, and dual coding (4) is why that image works. Spaced repetition (1) keeps it from fading, and active recall (2) is how you check whether it actually stuck. Component breakdown (5), handwriting (6) and the story method (7) add structure as your character count grows.

If you only do two things, make them spaced review and self-testing: they have the best evidence, and they work with any material. Add a vivid mnemonic for each new word, and you get both a fast start and a long memory.

Where Memzle fits in

Memzle focuses on Japanese vocabulary rather than kanji writing. It covers techniques 3 and 4 for you: every word comes with a sound-alike bridge, an illustrated story and audio. It also quizzes you on each word and brings learned words back for review. For handwriting and radical study, pair it with a dedicated kanji resource.

Remember every word with Memzle

Sound-alike bridges, cartoon stories and audio for every word, starting with Japanese. See how it works.

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