Japanese card linking / preview for kanji and vocab

Pre-requisites This is an add-on for anyone who: Reviews Japanese sentences from a sentence deck. Has a kanji recognition deck, with the kanji on the front side. (Optionally) has a vocab recognition deck, with the vocab word on the front side. Introduction While learning Japanese using the sentence method, I’ve desperately wished Anki had a card-linking facility so that I could look up a kanji while reviewing a sentence. For example, I’m reviewing the sentence 波を感じさせるデザインも織り交ぜます。I realise I’ve forgotten how 織 is pronounced. I know that I’ve learnt the kanji before and I even created a mnemonic for the reading, but now I remember neither the mnemonic, nor the reading. If my sentence had an easy link to that kanji 織, I’d be able to just take a quick look at it, the reading, the mnemonic and then be on my way to review the sentence in light of this information. But alas, Anki doesn’t have this feature and probably never will. Not prepared to wait for the software to catch up with the 21st century, I’ve created my own add-on just by asking Claude. I haven’t written one line of code – but this add-on does the job beautifully. Linking vs previewing I am aware there are add-ons that attempt to link card to card, but they require maintenance and set up, eg, you have to manually insert the note id of one card into another, etc. This add-on requires none of that – it has no upfront set-up or maintenance cost. In fact it doesn’t link cards, but it shows a preview of a kanji or vocab card that you already have in your kanji or vocab deck, respectively. How it works Kanji search: You select a kanji, hit a hotkey (or select a mouse menu option) and the back side of the kanji card is shown as preview. Vocab search: You select a vocab word, hit another hotkey (or select a different mouse menu option) and the back side of the vocab card is shown as preview. Of course, the kanji and the vocab word must exactly match the front side of a card in your kanji deck and your vocab deck, respectively. If the match is not exact, an error message to the effect of "No such card found" will be shown. There is also a split search facility for vocab words. You select a vocab word and select this option. A browser window opens showing all kanji cards that make up the vocab. This currently works only for those vocab words that are kanji-only (no kana). You might want to use a split search when you just want to look at all the constituent kanji one by one. All these options are available via mouse right-click as well as hotkeys. The hotkeys are configurable from under the Tools menu. Some other really cool features First cool feature Suppose you're previewing a kanji. That kanji uses other kanji. You can quickly preview that kanji as well, just using the same method - which will now open a second preview window for the second kanji - independent of all other windows. In other words, you can have a chain of preview windows. Really really cool feature: You can also edit a card from the preview window. Just hit F2 (default) or the edit key you've configured under the Tools menu (see below). This will open an edit window irrespective of how many other windows you have open. So basically this means you can have a chain of preview windows, each with its own edit window. You can exit these windows by pressing ESC to each, one by one. Even more awesome feature: Once you make an edit from a preview window, that preview window immediately updates to show your new edit. Hotkeys All functions are available through hotkeys, making it a very quick process to look up kanji or vocab during review. All hotkeys are configurable. If a hotkey is not working or misbehaving then you probably have the same hotkey already in use for some other function. The defaults are: Kanji search: k Vocab search: v Split search: s Edit from a preview window: f2 Config A small amount of initial set-up is needed. The add-on doesn’t know where your kanji and vocab cards are, so you have to tell it. You can set these up from under the Tools menu. Initially, when the add-on doesn't know where your kanji and vocab cards are, all search attempt will result in a "card not found" error message. The same will happen if your decks are set up wrong. Note that you can set multiple decks for kanji search and multiple decks for vocab search. The requirement however is that the kanji being searched must have maximum one match across all your kanji decks. And the same for vocab decks. If you have same kanji in two decks that are being searched, you'll get an error. Support - or the lack thereof This code was written entirely by Claude (based on my specification - obviously), not by me. I provide no support for it. Feel free to copy the code and ask your favourite AI chatbot to modify it as per your specific requirements. Images Kanji search Kanji search result Vocab search Vocab search result Split search for vocab Split search result Tools menu Tools menu - details

Min Anki	Max Anki	Updated
2.1.1	+	2026-08-15

Japanese card linking / preview for kanji and vocab

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