Many radicals are either made up of other radicals (like 西 being “pi” + “mouth”) or are kanji that are re-introduced as radicals, with the kanji themselves being made up out of radicals (like 曲 being “twenty” + “mouth” with the radical being introduced in Lv10).
Sometimes I want to search for a specific kanji to find it on Wanikani. For example, I want to search 福 (luck) and I know it has a “rice paddy” in it, so I search for the rice paddy radical, and check the kanji that use it. 福 is not among them, because it uses the “scarecrow” radical.
The radical page for “rice paddy” doesn’t give any information about there being another radical that uses “rice paddy” as component, so without remembering that there is a “scarecrow” radical, I won’t be able to find the 福 kanji without remembering its meaning/reading.
My suggestion is two-fold:
- Have a “radicals that use this radical” section on the radical’s information page, just like there is a “kanji that use this radical” section.
- If a kanji is later turned into a radical, have a link from the kanji to the radical it becomes, and from the radical to the kanji it’s from.
This will make it easier to look up kanji that you encounter in the wild, but forgot the meaning of.
