Большой японско-китайский словарь "Дай Кан Ва Дзитэн"

Japanese kanji dictionary

The Dai Kan Wa Jiten (大漢和辞典) is a Japanese dictionary of kanji (Chinese characters) compiled by Tetsuji Morohashi. Remarkable for its comprehensiveness and size, Morohashi's dictionary contains over 50,000 character entries and 530,000 compound words. Haruo Shirane (2003:15) said: "This is the definitive dictionary of the Chinese characters and one of the great dictionaries of the world."

Tetsuji Morohashi was originally motivated to create a dictionary in 1917 when he went to China to study Chinese. Trying to look up words in the largest available Chinese dictionaries was frustrating; the Kangxi Dictionary defines characters but not phrases, the Peiwen Yunfu lists phrases without definitions, and the Zhonghua Da Zidian had just been published. Morohashi's autobiography explains (Wilkinson 2000:74) that "he had to spend between a quarter and a third of his study time trying to find the meanings of words and phrases. This tedium he felt could be avoided if there were a dictionary that provided both citations and definitions." When Morohashi returned to Japan in 1919, he had 20 notebooks filled with Chinese vocabulary. In 1925, Ippei Suzuki (鈴木 一平), president of the Taishukan publishing house, requested Morohashi to edit a comprehensive kanji dictionary of an unprecedented scale. In order to print this giant reference work, fonts for many rare characters had to be created, since none existed. The first volume was published in 1943, but the fire bombing of Tokyo destroyed the printing plates and special fonts in 1945. After the war, Morohashi and his fellow editors reconstructed the dictionary from proofs. Due to a shortage of skilled craftsmen, Suzuki persuaded Mokichi Ishii (石井 茂吉), co inventor of phototypesetting, to recreate the necessary fonts. The first volume was published in 1955 and the final index volume in 1960. Morohashi was awarded the Order of the Chrysanthemum in 1957 and the Order of Culture in 1967 for his contributions to sinology and lexicography. Taishukan published a vocabulary index in 1990 and a supplemental volume in 2000.

Since the death of Tetsuji Morohashi in 1982 at the age of 99, Taishukan has published two Dai Kan Wa Jiten augmentations that amount to Volumes 14 and 15. The 1990 Goi sakuin (語彙索引) allows searching for words in Morohashi by their pronunciation in modern kana spelling, instead of the historical system used in Volumes 1 13. This index comprehensively lists every compound word listed in the main dictionary, including terms, phrases, and four character idioms. Vocabulary is arranged in the standard gojūon (五十音) ordering of kana and is cited by volume and page numbers. The 2000 Hokan (補巻) adds some 800 main character entries, approximately 33,000 new vocabulary terms, novel readings of characters, variant characters, etc. This last volume includes four types of character indexes. Like the "Vocabulary Index", this supplement uses standard modern kana but also provides the historical equivalents.

The (1962–1968) Zhongwen Da Cidian, sometimes called the Chinese Morohashi, is very similar in structure to Dai Kan Wa Jiten and was one of the most comprehensive Chinese dictionaries available until 1993. In 1982, Taishukan published an abridged "family edition" of the Dai Kan Wa Jiten. Their four volume Kō Kan Wa Jiten (広漢和辞典) enters 20,769 characters and some 120,000 words. It adds early oracle bone script and bronzeware script examples, and proposes hypothetical Old Chinese etymologies and word families. Kida Jun'ichirō wrote a Japanese book (1986) about the Dai Kan Wa Jiten, and edited another (1994) about lexicographers that discusses Morohashi's contributions (chap. 4) and Ishii's creation of characters (chap. 11). In November 2018, Taishukan released an electronic edition of Dai Kan Wa Jiten (for Windows PCs).