Is it possible to learn something from the books without knowledge of Japanese? What is the ratio of text vs. diagrams in these books?
I only have the third volume on thickness. I would not recommend it if you can not read Japanese quite well. Look at all the discussion on the meaning of thickness here and on rgg since JF tried to describe some of the different ideas presented in this book. :-)
Number 4, on corner positions, is accessible to people not able to read Japanese. It is a dictionary-like treatment of life-and-death in corner positions that often occur in real games. This differs from most tsumego books in which the problem positions are mostly contrived and would not likely happen in actual games. I have numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 from the list on the main page. Except for number 4 they have a high ratio of text to diagrams, and the text is not simple. One useful feature of these books, except for number 4, is the example games illustrating the concepts discussed.--Bob McGuigan