An Introduction To Written Japanese by PG O'Neill and S Yanada

A charity-shop bargain at £2.49.  O'Neill and Yanada were both at the School of Oriental and African Studies: O'Neill was responsible for the still-famous A Reader of Handwritten Japanese (reproductions of letters sent to him over the years, of varying linguistic difficulty and readability, with translations and in some cases Hepburn romanizations), and Yanada was the co-author of the kunrei-siki romanized 1958 Teach Yourself Japanese that I've got 10 chapters, out of 30, into on a few occasions.

The current volume was first published in 1963 and I have the fifth printing from 1990.  It's a nice little paperback the same dimensions as the little hardback Teach Yourself Japanese, and actually it's a companion volume to that: it contains 20 lessons that are supposed to be used in conjunction with the romanized text.  The kana are dealt with at the very start, then each lesson introduces you to some characters with specified readings, then there are some example sentences (vertical handwriting, which is doubly unusual for a beginners' text), a kunrei-siki romanization, and grammatical notes.  English translations are at the back.  There's not much grammar explanation so Teach Yourself Japanese, or an acceptable substitute, really is necessary.

Looks as though this is now out of print, presumably since almost everyone now uses Hepburn.  I'm fond of the old Teach Yourself Japanese in spite of my many failures to get through it and its antiquated romanization: I might well have a go at it again in conjunction with this book, which is quite an ambitious volume (it gets as far as introducing the old kana usage, which I suppose was less of an historical curio 50 years ago than it is today).  On completing it, the beginner should be able to "... meet with success in most encounters with the written language".  Which is nice if true.  I like books that tell you they're going to get you to a useful level in finite time; it's what you're probably looking for, after all.

In other news: an augmented-reality app for Japanese youngsters to let them get something out of newspapers that they can't read.  Must be frustrating to be a young person barred by a complicated writing system from reading above one's level.