勉強 = study = force sb to do sth

I find it really funny that the word for study in Japanese 勉強します（ べんきょうします) uses two characters that in Chinese (mian3 qiang3) mean "force somebody to do something," "to do with great difficulty," or "reluctantly, grudgingly." Chinese has several words for study, among them 讀書 (du2 shu1, literally "read book") and 念書 (nian4 shu1, read/study book).

Why does Japanese use these two characters?
Are the Chinese words for study as used today a result of a recent language reform?

memorizing japanese

I find memorizing Japanese particularly difficult. Since we haven't started memorizing by associating the sound of words with the kanji (Chinese characters), to me it is just a bunch of random sounds. Non-English speakers no doubt face a similar challenge when learning English, or any other alphabetic language for that matter. Knowing the kanji is helpful, but the differences in pronunciation and usage (the verbs especially tend to take different kanji than they would in Chinese) are still significant.

Are there any techniques anyone has for memorizing Japanese words?

I have had limited success with mnemonics.