The Stone Bridge Podcast

Going Crazy for Kanji, with Eve Kushner

Episode Summary

Do kanji spark joy? Or just drive you nuts? Eve Kushner, author of Crazy for Kanji, talks about her fascination with the Japanese writing system.

Episode Notes

Stone Bridge Press publisher Peter Goodman talks with author Eve Kushner, author of Crazy for Kanji, about the Japanese writing system and her efforts to create one essay for each of the 2,000+ characters designated for "everyday use."

Topics include:

• Publisher Goodman confesses his obtuseness in failing to catch the joke behind the name of Eve's website, Joy o' Kanji
• Eve explains where her fascination with kanji came from
• Obscure Japanese words with no English equivalent
• Is it weird for a non-Japanese person to have more interest in kanji than native Japanese do? 
• How are kanji taught to children in Japan?
• Are modern Japanese with laptops forgetting how to write kanji themselves? 
• Cool ways of remembering kanji; why does everyone talk about the Heisig method?
• Kanji as art: each kanji has its own structure, but each one also represents its own linguistic and cultural universe
• Radicals: the building blocks of kanji
• Are kanji in China different from kanji in Japan?

Eve Kushner is a writer and journalist who has written hundreds of articles for dozens of markets. Now she writes exclusively about kanji, working obsessively and quite happily on her huge project Joy o' Kanji. With this undertaking, she aims to write one essay about each of the 2,136 kanji (written characters) used in daily life in Japan. Eve has done interviews in several media, including TV, radio, and print publications such as Newsweek. The Press Coverage page has information about these appearances, as well as links to articles about Eve's work. In 2009 Stone Bridge Press published Eve's magnum opus, Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters.

Peter Goodman is publisher of Stone Bridge Press in Berkeley, California, which for over thirty years has specialized in books on Asia, especially Japan and China. For a complete list of Stone Bridge Press books, visit www.stonebridge.com.