in scholarly works have been used.
字彙 Zihui (Character Collection; J.: Jii)
This was the first character dictionary to be arranged according to the system of 214 determinatives (as opposed to the 540 in Shuowen jiezi) which has been used until modern times in China and continuously down to the present in Japan. Dealing with 33,179 characters and compiled by 梅膺祚 Mei Dingzuo, Zihui was published in 1615 AD. While clearly a very significant work that was used in the compilation of later dictionaries, Zihui is noted here primarily for its significance in devising the 214 determinative system; it has not been referred to directly in the process of compiling this book.
正字通 Zhengzitong (Mastery of Orthodox Characters; J.: Seijitsū)
Originally compiled by 張自烈 Zhang Zilie, the manuscript of Zhengzitong was purchased by 寥文英 Liao Wenying, who supplemented and published it in about 1671AD. Zhengzitong lists around 33,000 characters arranged according to the 214 determinatives.
Note: in compiling the present book, Zhengzitong was used occasionally to supplement Kangxi zidian (see below), using a 1996 facsimile edition (Guoji Wenhua Publishing Co.). This is because for technical reasons the electronic version of Kangxi zidian referred to immediately below was not always available to consult.
康煕字典 Kangxi zidian (The Kangxi Dictionary; J.: Kōki jiten)
This very prestigious dictionary was compiled at the command of Emperor Kangxi (康煕) (1654–1722) by a group of scholars which included 張玉書 Zhang Yushu and 陳廷敬 Chen Tingjing. Completed and published in 1716, the aim of this work was to provide an authoritative character dictionary to remedy the shortcomings of Zihui and the verbosity of Zhengzitong. The Kangxi zidian, which lists 47,035 characters, served as a standard for matters relating to Chinese characters from the time of compilation down into the 20th century. This is not to say that the Kangxi zidian is totally error free. The existence of errors—probably inevitable in any case in a work of such scale—appears to be due in part to the need to complete compilation within a time-frame that was set by Emperor Kangxi.
Note: for compiling the present book, two editions of Kangxi zidian were referred to: one was the edition published in 2009 by Wanjuan Publishing Co.; the other one—used to ascertain actual character shapes promoted in Kangxi zidian entries—was the electronic version produced by Personal Media Co. (Tokyo, ca.2001). The latter text is a scanned version of the Peking Palace printed edition of 1827. Pagination for the latter version is given by reference not to the traditional page numbers for individual volumes of the dictionary, but as a continuum running from 1–3671.
6 Printed Texts and the Calligraphic Tradition
The term ‘traditional form’ will be seen in many entries in this book; it is used to refer in principle to printed forms based on character shapes in Kangxi zidian, which served as an authoritative standard in mainland China and Japan until around the middle of the 20th century. These forms were favored by scholars because they tended to retain elements of the small seal character shapes in the very highly regarded Shuowen jiezi. The forms in Kangxi zidian and later mechanically produced texts sometimes differ somewhat from the corresponding shapes favored in the calli-graphic tradition, i.e., in texts that served as calligraphic models for many hundreds of years and indeed even down to the present. To illustrate this, let us consider 高 and 髙: 高 is the traditional Kangxi zidian form, reflecting the fact that 高 corresponds closely to the small seal form, while 髙 was favored in the calligraphic tradition. Another example is provided by 京 and 亰, where 京 is the traditional Kangxi zidian form, reflecting the form of this character as it appears in Shuowen jiezi, but 亰 is predominant in the calligraphic tradition.
In cases where the traditional form is noted at the beginning of an entry in this book, this is because it differs from the corresponding form in standard modern Japanese usage. For example, in the case of 乱 ‘disorder’ (entry 999), 亂 is noted as the traditional form, and for 旧 ‘old, past’ (entry 677), 舊 is noted as the traditional form. Not infrequently there is some variation (typically very minor) in the traditional form for a given character; this is a point about which readers should not be unduly concerned. In most cases in the entries in this book we give just one traditional form. In modern Japanese usage, various relatively minor earlier differences between the printed and handwritten shapes for a given character have been eliminated, leaving only a small number of instances such as 人 (printed and handwritten forms differ modestly) and 入 (again, printed and handwritten forms differ in a minor way).
Note: originally in China and Japan, printing of texts was done using the wood-block printing technique, whereby large blocks of a hard wood were engraved with text in reverse, then the blocks were inked to transfer the text onto paper. While movable type technology was invented in China at around the 11th century, xylo-graphic (woodblock) printing remained the preferred method until the latter half of the 19th century. At that period, movable metal type came into favor, following the established norm in the West; the character shapes for the new type were based (with some modification) on those in Kangxi zidian, and evolved into what became known in Japanese as 明朝体 Minchōtai ‘Ming printed form’.
7 Layout of Entries in This Book
Individual entries for the 2,136 characters vary greatly in length and other respects, but a broad general format is followed, as explained below.
7.1 Order
The 2,136 character entries in this book are set out in the order they are listed in the revised Jōyō kanji list of 2010. In the main part of this book, the sequential number for a particular character is shown in the top left of the box for each entry. The first 1,006 characters are divided into six successive grades: the first grade sets out those characters to be taught in the first year of primary schooling, the second grade those to be taught in the second year, and so on. The remaining corpus of 1,130 characters, for learning in secondary education, is not divided into grades. Within each of the six grades, and the following undivided corpus, characters are arranged according to the 五十音図 gojū onzu, a traditional framework that was a prominent part of pre-modern Japanese language theory.
7.2 Character Shapes
At the head of each entry, the character shape is given large in the standard printed shape for modern Japanese. The larger shape to the right of that represents a brush-written equivalent of aesthetic merit. When writing by hand in the modern period, the writing brush has been superseded in the everyday usage of individuals by and large by other more convenient writing instruments such as the fountain pen and ballpoint pen. Use of the writing brush is, however, still maintained very actively in the realm of calligraphy. Readers who need everyday model shapes drawn by pen are referred to A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese (see Bibliography). Regarding the process of script reform which involved many changes and led to the standard character shapes in modern Japanese, detailed information can be found in Chapters 8 and 9 of A History of Writing in Japan.
Within the text of each entry, the traditional printed form (shape) of a character is normally given where this is different from the standard printed form for modern Japanese. For example, the traditional equivalent corresponding to 旧 ‘old, past’ (entry 677) is 舊. In some cases the difference in shape between the traditional form and the modern form is very minor. One example of this is 道 ‘road’ (entry 205), for which the traditional form has 辶 as determinative in contrast to modern standard usage in which it has been changed to 辶. Another example is 者 ‘person’ (entry 314), which in the traditional form has an extra stroke in the form of a dot. In a case such as this, where the difference is judged to be insignificant for explaining the etymology, we do not always list the traditional form separately. Incidentally, treatment of characters involving a very small difference in shape between the traditional and modern forms is not always
