Shinpan Kadokawa Nihon Chimei Daijiten

The 51-volume Kadokawa Encyclopedia of Japanese Historical Place Names shines in the history of Japanese dictionaries as a major accomplishment of one great compilation committee comprised of researchers of place names, geography, and history, with local historians from all over the country. Available now is the digital edition of this compilation of place names from all 47 prefectures of Japan—the largest dictionary of its kind in this country. It compiles ancient and modern place names according to prefecture, investigating and referring to all manner of topographic materials, revealing the history of a place, as well as that of its name, with its origins. Not only historical administrative place names for each period, but also natural place names such as mountains, hills, rivers, lakes and marshes, and man-made features such as roads, highways and railways are recorded abundantly. Collated headings make it possible to view a place’s name from the present-day to ancient times, at a glance.

The JapanKnowledge edition contains approximately 260,000 place-name entries from all volumes, based on the DVD-ROM edition corresponding to the Great Heisei Consolidation. Place names of large areas that straddle multiple prefectures in the printed edition have been included in each prefectural edition.
Naturally, this vast amount of information is open to advanced search, not only by headline and full text, but also by prefecture, period, and premodern name. Further, for readers wishing to peruse the transition of a regional name, we recommend setting the “Bookshelf” function to view by city, ward, town, or village.

Japan's national heritage is passed on to the future through the unprecedented large scale and comprehensiveness of this dictionary of place names.