jokoto wrote:

I am thinking of doing a repetition of all kanjis, but instead of just repetite all kanjis, I'd like to make a list of all kanjis with thematic ordering. For example: I'd like to review all kanjis with mouth or tree on left. Or review kanjis with equal meaning like secret / secrecy. Did you order kanjis in special lists like that way?

Must have missed this post first time round...

I haven't made any lists like this. However, characters with mouth on the left aren't necessarily related, other than visually. For example, although 味 and 鳴 both have 口 on the left, they have different 部首。 The　部首 for 鳴 is 鳥 as opposed to 口 for 味。

So what I'm getting at is that if you wanted to make a list similar to what you describe above, it might be more beneficial to focus on 部首 as opposed to Heisig's primatives. So a list with mouth might include characters like 名　命　古　問　司　吹　喫 etc

A list of words would be great. Did anyone do something like this?

Rather than review the kanji this way, it would probably be more beneficial to start learning vocabulary. As you see these kanji in context, it gets easier to differentiate between similar-looking kanji and/or characters with similar meanings.

That said, I have made vocab lists based on themes. So, for example, I had a pretty exhaustive 'parts of the body' Anki deck, a 'geography' deck, a 'common terms in newspaper reports' deck, etc.

I think the strength to this approach was that, any time I had a conversation about one of the themes I had studied, I had a depth of knowledge of vocab related to that theme that allowed me to participate fully in the discussion. I always found it so frustrating to be talking about, say, the state of the American government - prattling away just fine, using all kinds of complex words - and then getting completely hung up because I don't know the word for 'veto.' It's like the whole conversation comes to a grinding halt because I don't know that one word.

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As for learning the names of bushu, I, too, have found that knowing the names of the bushu has helped me over and over when asking Japanese how to write certain kanji. Keep in mind, though, that even the Japanese don't know the names of all the bushu - even the common ones.

I had a particularly zealous professor of Japanese in grad school who required us to learn the names of all the bushu (this same professor had us learn how to write the names of every Japanese prefecture in kanji from memory. he also made sure that all of his required reading was of materials that were yet to be translated into English. he was hard-core, to say the least).

Anyway, I busted my rear and learned the names of all the bushu, and started using them when describing kanji to Japanese people. Most of the time, they had no clue what I was talking about.

A lot of the bushu they simply don't know, and in lieu of the name say things like "oh, it's the right-hand part of X kanji" or "it's the bottom part of Y kanji from Z word."

Other bushu have acquired common names - like 冖, which is technically called べき冠, but commonly called ワ冠 (literally, 'the crown radical shaped like katakana wa').

But for the common radicals, it can, in deed, be very handy knowledge to have.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/部首
the list (full?).. sure it is a interesting read