Asian Memory Methods : Secret Memory Techniques, Kyoto 1771

General Memory Chat
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@chrisaldrich Thanks for the mention. My first book for learning Kanji contains 1,000 visual mnemonics. It also includes mnemonics for the hiragana and katakana. Henshall’s book is a great resource.

https://www.amazon.com/Kanji-Pict-Graphix-Japanese-Mnemonics/dp/0962813702/ref=sr_1_1?crid=XOQOYI44C9TN&keywords=kanji+pictographix&qid=1672341641&sprefix=kanji+pictograp%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-1

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Your Chinese mnemonic system sounds amazing. I would very much like to read a more detailed description of how you do it, as I am still learning Chinese. When you write it up, please do so in this thread or link in this thread to the relevant one, as I don’t want to miss it!

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I’ll message you. Happy to share at this stage as I refine it.

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This gave me a sensible price - I have ordered it!

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Thanks @LynneKelly. It’s great to connect with you.

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For the historians and linguists, a digitized version of the original (manuscript) book in Japanese is available from the National Institute of Japanese Literature and Kobe University Library at
https://kotenseki.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100345690/viewer/3

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The translation of the Japanese Secret Memory Methods is also available in different formats:

Just for visibility, finally Google Books and Google Play have uploaded the book, so it’s available in PDF format now too with a preview function (not just Kindle format on Amazon).

Google Books link

Google Play link

I have started on the busy memory palace method from it. Great fun!

Lynne

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That’s fantastic, Chris. I want to read this in the original. Nothing like lofty (unrealistic?) goals! This is so beautiful - seeing the original book replicated like that.

I really want to add the extra characters for Japanese so I can read it as well as Chinese. But I need a lot more Chinese characters first.

Now that my memory palace for Chinese and memory system for the pinyin and characters, is thoroughly in place, I am moving a lot faster. I am already thinking of where I will extend the palace to add the Hiragana and Katakana. I want so many more hours in the day!

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I would love if someone who has read this can tell us if there are any useful strategies that are unknown to the Western memory traditions.

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@cabinmoose, Ok, request taken.

Review of Secret Memory Techniques, Kyoto, 1771

This little treatise has a few techniques concerning the peg system of using locations, what we might also call the method of loci (MoL) or a journey. But modern texts have covered this technique repeatedly, and even on this forum, the MoL is well-explained. What would be interesting would be to follow the influence of the Dominicans in the 16th century who used body locations and buildings for loci to Japan and to see how Agostino del Riccio’s methods were simplified into these recommendations in 20 pages.

Here is a summary of the work with page references:

  • p12 Find a teacher to work with every day for months to master the techniques.
  • p17 Creation of 30 location pegs on body. Mostly a top to bottom rule.
  • p21 Placement of target items on body pegs.
  • p24 Focus on the association.
  • p26 Creation of 20 static unique location pegs around your house. Arbitrary path.
  • p29 Creation of 5 location pegs in a store. Recommendations for other pegs.
  • p30 Placement of people and related info on body pegs.
  • p32 Interesting recommendation to extract two features (markers) of color for each object to remember, one major, one minor.
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