Learn Kanji Systematically

Understand how kanji components express form, meaning, and sound—then use that knowledge to learn, remember, and read kanji more effectively.

Comprehensive Online Course, just $99!

In this self-paced online course, you’ll learn how kanji actually work and build a practical, repeatable system for learning and remembering them more efficiently.

Curriculum

Unit I: Intro and Foundations

Lesson 0: Intro to the course + Hiragana & Katakana

Lesson 1: Rules of Memory

Lesson 2: Three Attributes of Writing/Three Functions

Lesson 3: Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Stroke Order

Unit II: How Kanji Actually Work

Lesson 4: Form Components

Lesson 5: Meaning Components

Lesson 6: Sound Components

Lesson 7: Sound series (characters with the same sound component)

Lesson 8: Empty Components

Lesson 9: All about kanji meanings

Lesson 10: Japanese orthography

Unit III: Tips Strategies for Learning More Effectively

Lesson 11: The "IME Method"

Lesson 12: Spaced Repetition

Lesson 13: The Pipelining Strategy

Lesson 14: The Minimalist Strategy

About the Outlier Kanji Masterclass

A comprehensive online video course from Outlier’s character experts, with supporting PDF chapters designed to help you understand kanji structure and learn more effectively.

Designed specifically for Japanese learners, the course adapts Outlier’s functional-component approach to the structure, readings, and orthographic patterns of kanji.

The method grew out of years of university-level teaching and Outlier’s Chinese Character Masterclass, then was adapted for the specific challenges Japanese learners face.

You’ll get lifetime access to over 25 video lessons on kanji and how to learn them, plus you’ll learn:

• 300 kanji, specially curated to teach you how kanji actually work

• all about functional components in kanji

• how to learn new kanji more efficiently

• how to recall kanji you’ve learned more reliably

• tips for learning vocabulary

This course is aimed at all levels and does not require you to own or use any of our other products—it’s entirely self-contained.

Whether you’re just starting or already know hundreds of kanji, you’ll learn a clearer system for understanding structure, diagnosing mistakes, and studying independently.

All students in this course will get a 15% discount code for use on any of our other products.

Understand How Kanji Actually Work

Q: How long does the course take to complete?

It depends on you. Some people do about a lesson per week, while others do a lesson per month. You can go at your own pace.

Q: How much time will it require per lesson?

That depends on your level and how deeply you want to dive in. Video lessons are generally 5–15 minutes, with supporting PDF materials and 25 characters per week. You can go more slowly and return later because you get lifetime access.

You’ll learn how these components work and use them to recall kanji more reliably.

Kanji are built from functional components that can signal form, meaning, or sound.

Then you’ll apply the same system to learning unfamiliar kanji more efficiently.

Demo Lesson

What Students Say

*from our Chinese Character Masterclass

"Amazing Course"

"The course is amazing! I was a HSK3 level reader, but could barely write. Using your course has not only helped me to learn to write, but has boosted my reading comprehension. I guessed the meaning and sound of 症 today, having never seen the character before."

Robin O'Connor (France)

"Improved Recall"

"After a month of not reviewing, I was able to write (not just recognize) 283 of the 300 characters in my queue. Before I took the Outlier course, it would have been 0."

Edsko De Vries (Netherlands)

"The characters all stick"

"But now [the characters] really all stick. In less than 3 months with all your tools about learning efficiency, I can say I have memorized 570 Characters and 2100 words, with all the tones... I don't feel saturation, just the need to practice to maintain."

Pascal Morel-Fourrier (Singapore)

Your Instructors

Ash Henson, PhD

Co-founder, Outlier Linguistics

Ash earned his PhD in Chinese at National Taiwan Normal University, specializing in paleography and historical linguistics. His research on character structure and historical sound systems underpins Outlier’s functional-component approach. He has spent 30 years studying languages and developing more efficient ways to learn them.

John Renfroe

Co-founder, Outlier Linguistics

John studied linguistics and paleography in the Graduate Institute of Chinese at National Taiwan Normal University. His coursework and research focused on excavated Warring States texts, historical Chinese character morphology, and the Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字. He also co-founded and ran the Taipei Classical Chinese Reading Group.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I go at my own pace? Will I still be able to access the course once I've finished it?

Yes! You get lifetime access, so we'll keep everything available online so that you can go through it at your own pace and review it whenever you want to!

Is this course for beginners, intermediates, or advanced learners?

It's for anyone! The point of the course isn't to learn the 300 kanji we'll be covering. The point of the course is to teach you how to be an effective, independent learner of kanji using functional components. So it may be a bit more intensive if you're a beginner, because you'll probably be encountering many or most of these for the first time. If you already know the kanji that the course covers, it will be a bit less intensive and you'll be able to focus on learning how kanji actually work.

How long does the course take to complete?

It depends on you! Some people do about a lesson per week, while others do a lesson per month. There's a lot of information to absorb, so it may be difficult to go faster, but you can if you want!

So feel free to go at your own pace!

How much time will it require per lesson?

That will depend on your level and how deeply you want to dive in. It will probably be more useful for me to describe what kind of material the course will have, and then you can probably estimate how much time you want to devote to it per lesson.

The video lessons will likely all be 5-15 minutes long. There will also be PDF materials covering the same or similar material, often in a bit more depth than the video. And there will be 25 characters per week to learn.

That's actually quite a bit of material, but remember, you can go at a slower pace if you'd like! Or you could decide to just look over the characters rather than memorizing them the first time through, and then come back to memorizing them later. It's up to you! You get lifetime access to the course, so you can always come back to it again later to dive in deeper!