Basic Kanji Book was compiled by four Japanese editors (Chieko Kano, Yuri Shimizu, Hiroko Takenaka, and Eriko Ishii) for the purpose of teaching the first 500 most basic kanji. These 500 kanji are divided up into 22 separate lessons. Each lesson is thematically and grammatically organized for higher connection rate in the learning process. Lessons include Kanji for time, Kanji at the Zoo, Kanji for Adjectives, Kanji for Verbs, and many more. The text is written to the goal of preparing the student for higher levels of Kanji learning by laying out the foundations that lead to the understanding of its inner workings. Though the text is complete in itself for accomplishing many basic day-to-day tasks in written Japanese.
The teaching methodology includes stroke by stroke lessons, examples of each character in compound forms, both "on" and "kun" readings, practice blanks within the book to follow, transliteration of sentences from English to Japanese, various writing exercises, periodic reviews, practical examples of daily use for the characters within any given lesson, fun games to encourage learning, and helpful illustrations for learning mnemonics. Varied methodologies promote fuller language acquisition.
This book is written for the student that has a firm understanding of both Hiragana and Katakana though no prior knowledge of Kanji is necessary. The layout of this book promotes effective self-study though this book could also be effectively used as the primary classroom text for teaching Kanji.
In conclusion, few if any other Kanji learning books do as superb a job as this one in making an otherwise difficult task both easy and fun. Quite possibly this is the best Kanji book for high learning retention and practical use on the market.