Students have been reading and writing the Japanese language for centuries, and they build their knowledge most successfully when they rely on a trusted resource. Today's most trusted--and readily available--resource is A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese. This classic, best-selling learning and reference work, trusted by beginning and intermediate students of Japanese is the best way to learn kanji and kana, and is now being offered as a fourth, thoroughly revised and up-to-date edition.

Having a knowledge of the full set of General Use characters is the key to mastering everyday Japanese and will allow students to read and write Japanese up to the level of a typical Japanese newspaper with ease and confidence.

Key features of this revised edition include:

• The most recent changes prescribed by the Japanese Ministry of Education.
• Covers all the 2,136 characters in the 'General Use' / Joyo Kanji set.
• Special codes indicate the kanji required for the JLPT and AP exams.
• Full range of Japanese character readings and English definitions
• Stroke counts, stroke-order diagrams, and compounds.
• Essential Japanese characters are presented according to the new arrangement by grade, based on their frequency of usage rather than their complexity.
• Numerous examples are given of the kanji compounds and derivatives used to form everyday words in Japanese.