The series is available in English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew.

[3] There is a supplementary book, Remembering the Kana, which teaches the Japanese syllabaries (hiragana and katakana).

The method differs markedly from traditional rote-memorization techniques practiced in most courses.

The course teaches the student to utilize all the constituent parts of a kanji's written form—termed "primitives", combined with a mnemonic device that Heisig refers to as "imaginative memory".

The method requires the student to invent their own stories to associate the keyword meaning with the written form.

However, in cases where the reader may be easily confused or for difficult kanji, Heisig often provides a small story or hint.

Heisig splits the kanji into various chapters, according to the most appropriate method to learn their readings.

The other part is in a similar style to Volume 2, where the readings of the kanji are learned.

It uses mostly the same imaginative memory technique as Remembering the Kanji I, though some katakana are prompted to be learned as simplified forms of their hiragana counterparts.