This study examines the relationship between how learners of Japanese as a second language perceive the learning of "kanji" (i.e., the logographic characters shared with Chinese) and their ability to learn novel "kanji" words using morphological and contextual information. Eighty college students learning Japanese as a foreign language completed a 60-item "kanji" questionnaire, a 75-item "kanji" test, and a 30-item reading comprehension test. Results indicated modest but statistically significant correlations between the belief variables and the "kanji" ability measures, with reading proficiency factored out. Regression analyses revealed that although reading proficiency accounted for a large portion of variance of the participants' performance on the "kanji" test, belief in the effectiveness of metacognitive strategies accounted for 14-16% of the variance of success in morphological analysis. The results suggest that (a) students' task-specific beliefs have a significant impact on their achievement on a given task and that (b) metacognitive awareness significantly affects how a learner handles a challenging learning task.