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It is the radical (from Latin radix, meaning "root"), which suggests the general nature of a kanji character; its origin or its type as we just outlined. The radical is usually itself a common kanji, but sometimes is not (examples here). There are a total of 214 radicals, which are used in dictionaries, and teaching tools. They are referenced in the book only as a basis to help you remember the kanji. In the lower right part of each page is information relating to the component parts of a kanji. These are often but not always its radical elements. The analysis of a kanji may vary and so providing a definitive list of parts can be difficult.
There are a number of drawbacks to radicals, which render radicals of little practical use as an indexing tool to a non- Japanese student.
- There are alternative methods of radical classification. We show the ‘classical radical’ at the bottom of each page and the bushu radical which is popular now.
- Within a radical taxonomy, a radical may be assigned different names, or the same name may be taken differently (e.g. てん ‘ten’ could be the丿’no’ or丶’dot’ radical)
- Most kanji contain more than one radical, knowing which one is its bushu is not always at all easy even for the Japanese.(E.g. Bushu for ‘friend’ 朋is meat 肉 not moon 月, this table shows the other common radical variants in compounds)
- One radical may look like another e.g. 22 box 匚and 23 conceal 匸 (this is one example with no other kanji in its ‘group’)
- Even if you surmount all these hurdles, you will sometimes find hundreds of kanji sharing the same radical (e.g. 人 is shared between 237 kanji)
The upshot of all this is that if you want to look up an unfamiliar kanji using radicals, make sure you have some aspirin with you! Fortunately there are devices and SKIP code dictionaries available which are a much better investment than pills.
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