Dai Kanwa Jiten

(Great Chinese-Japanese Character Dictionary)

TAISHUKAN Publishing Co., Ltd.

The highest achievement among Chinese-Japanese character dictionaries, containing 50,000 character entries and 530,000 compounds. Searchable by character entries and vocabulary.

Celebrated as the “great treasure trove of kanji culture,” the Dai Kanwa Jiten is a Chinese-Japanese character dictionary containing 50,000 character entries and 530,000 compounds, having scoured the existing literature and dictionaries, both ancient and modern. The vocabulary of every historical period is covered, including pre-Qin classics such as the Shijing (Classic of Poetry) and Lunyu (Analects of Confucius); chronicles such as the Shiji (Historical Records) and Hanshu (Book of Han); the Wen Xuan (Selections of Refined Literature); Tang and Son-dynasty poetry and prose, and novels from the Ming and Qing dynasties. The scope of consulted literature extends to Buddhist scripture, medicine and pharmacognosy, law, topography, and even Chinese poetry written in Japan.
This is one of the great representative dictionaries of Japan, which has long been widely utilized not only in universities and other research institutions, but also in temples and shrines for the assigning of posthumous Buddhist names and composing ritual prayers, and as a highly influential reference for identifying kanji during the formulation of Japanese character codes.
In the JapanKnowledge edition, not only can single Chinese-Japanese characters be searched by direct input, but also by radical, stroke count, or reading, and even with just a part of the character, if you do not know the reading or radical. The approximately 376,000-items vocabulary contained in the vocabulary index volume has also been digitized. Searches are possible from the vocabulary’s character notation, reading, character count, and so on.
Compiler: Morohashi Tetsuji
Revisers: Kamata Tadashi, Yoneyama Torataro

Contents information

Original books 大漢和辞典 修訂第二版
Publisher TAISHUKAN Publishing Co., Ltd.
Publication date First edition published 1955; Vocabulary Index published 1990; Supplemental Volume published 2000.
Number of volumes 14 volumes (Volumes 1-12, a Vocabulary Index, and a Supplemental Volume)
Book price Base price: ¥240,000 + tax
Release date April 1, 2021
Number of entries 51,110 single character entries and 376,342 searchable vocabulary items
Number of characters
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(as of April 2023)