Hi all. I have completed RTK1 but have not yet moved on to RTK3. I am currently attempting to learn as much vocabulary as possible using JLPT2 vocab lists. The process is proving to be tremendously helpful for learning readings, reinforcing kanji recognition, and understanding how Japanese words are built. It's a grind, but it feels good. The great majority of the kanji I find in the list is covered in RTK1. When I encounter a new kanji, I always search for it on this site, and check out the stories posted by other users.

My question concerns those occasions when a primitive I learned in RTK1 appears, but in a slightly altered form. #2476 櫛 is an example. I see that each user story refers to the primitive on the right as "node". I imagine that Heisig might address this in the third book, and I plan to buy it and continue my kanji study in the near future. For now though, can someone explain how I should learn this kanji so that I don't mix up this version of "node" with the original one I learned?

Here's another example: #2604 秤

Thanks in advance. I apologize if this has been addressed before.

How are those characters' primitives different from the ones in the books? Sounds like this might just be a matter of the font your browser is using.

exitmusic3, sounds like you're already aware that some jouyou kanji contain modified forms, but those same forms in non-jouyou kanji will usually be the old/unmodified form.

We're in a bit of transition right now wrt form. Until recently, some companies had been modifying non-jouyou kanji to be consistent with jouyou kanji (called extended shinjitai). But that stopped when the govt decided that the official form of non-jouyou kanji would be unsimplified. So which form you see will depend on the year of your OS, dictionary, program, etc. and what fonts are used.

Heisig elected to use extended shinjitai in the RTK1 supplement (the 2010 new jouyou), but included the unmodified forms as well. So I'm guessing that he used extended shinjitai in RTK3 also. (If you don't already have it, you can download the RTK1 supplement from his site to see examples of the different forms.)

As for how to remember which is which, there are only a few variations, so recognition won't be a problem. For writing, you could either incorporate a distinguishing hint for old forms into your stories or else hope that you'll just never forget which kanji are jouyou (pre 2010). :-)

Thank you for the detailed (and awesome) response. Makes me want to study the history and evolution of the characters much more. I'm glad to hear that there are relatively few variations, and recognition and reproduction haven't proven to be too difficult yet.

Thanks again!