The SKIP method is indeed a modern invention. It was invented by Jack Halpern and used in his Kanji dictionaries which were published by Kodansha and Kenkyusha

The SKIP method is indeed a modern invention. It was invented by Jack Halpern and used in his Kanji dictionaries which were published by Kodansha and Kenkyusha - I guess this is where the 'single publisher' idea is coming from. These dictionaries are all 'Learner's dictionaries', and I'm not sure if SKIP was ever used in a dictionary aimed at native speaker - although it is probably the best method for paper-based Kanji lookup. The more traditional stroke-count based lookup, OP was referring to is probably the radical+stroke count lookup, which is of Chinese origin and considerably older[1]. Using that system, you would first find out the kanji's radical (部, basically just a "part" in Japanese), find the radical in the index, count the remaining number of strokes in the kanji and then find the kanji. Both the radicals themselves and the kanji listed below each radical heading in the index are ordered by stroke count, which qualifies this system as stroke count ordering. This system is unfortunately much more confusing than SKIP (especially for learners), since there is a good chunk of kanji where the radical is not apparent, some radicals have multiple variants - and of course you'd have to first learn all the 214 standard radicals in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical