The keywords are not a crutch, they should fade gradually as you learn the readings.  Plus it doesn't really matter even if you remember the keyword anyways.  I think that someone who never tried the method was the one to devised this "crutch" theory, but many decide to drop the english keywords because they know the Japanese keyword so well, or it is simply saves more study time to switch.

I concur that the keyword begins to go away. I NEVER look at 私　as PRIVATE. It remains "I" for all intents and purposes unless I'ｍ reviewing RTK.  Same goes with "evening" 晩　.

So there's merit in Heisig's feeling about how your recall of Kanji works.

That said, you could remove common use kanji from your deck. However, if you're doing the deck right, the common use kanji will come up very rarely so will not need to be removed as the time spread effectively removes it. Just a matter of how you look at it.

Brose/Nuke,

Sorry, your posts weren't up when I started replying.

I agree completely. I don't want to start a discussion about the effect of keywords on reading as I already know that once a word is recognised I don't even need to look closely at the individual kanji, less bother about the english keyword. I can pick it up just from the pattern on the page.

Bit of soul searching here... I guess that my frustration is stemming from the review system. Often I fail a kanji because the keyword is obtuse or can be interpreted in a number of different ways and I don't link it back properly. Even when the kanji is one which I am utterly familiar. At those times it feels like I am working not on remembering the kanji, but on re-enforcing the keyword.

This is especially true now that I finished the book a couple of months ago. The kanji that I'm reviewing regularly are largely those that I have weak connections between the keyword and the character. Do I really want to work for 30 minutes per day to re-enforce this link, or is there a better way to spend that energy?

Obviously throwing away the whole review system would be disasterous, but this is a genuine frustration which I'd like to overcome.

Terhorst, I hope you're not taking the p**s with that kanji in your sig 

suffah wrote:

Floatingweed, since you mention a review deck do you use Anki?

I think it'd be easy to just edit the cards that you no longer want to retain via Heisig and replace it with a J-J definition or even a sentence.  When the "offending" card pops up just hit Control + E and you can instantly adjust the card as needed.

It's iFlash I use, but the principle is the same, and I can edit cards mid-review.

I think I'm probably too afraid to take the radical step removing cards completely from my review cycle at the moment, so your suggestion is probably the best way forward. If I come across a kanji which I can associate with a known japanese word better than the Heisig keyword I'll replace it, highlighting the reading of the character with brackets. iFlash supports multiple card sides, so I should be able to keep the Heisig keyword on a separate side for reference (or to backtrack if I find I've made a horrible mistake!)