The Kōjien (Japanese: 広辞苑, kōjien) is a Japanese dictionary. It is a large, single-volume Japanese-Japanese dictionary with around 3,000 pages containing both modern and old Japanese words. Published by Iwanami Shoten, Kōjien literally means 'wide garden of words'. Like most Japanese dictionaries, the headwords are in hiragana, and the words are arranged in gojūon order. It is considered by many Japanese people to be the standard dictionary.

The Kōjien is the brainchild of Shinmura Izuru (Japanese: 新村出(1876-1967)), a professor of linguistics and Japanese language for many years at Kyoto University. First published in 1955, the Kōjien was an enlargement and improvement of Shinmura's Jien 辞苑, a much smaller Japanese language dictionary originally published in 1935. Work on improving the Jien began after World War II, in September 1948.

Shinmura Izuru

Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Western Japan, in 1876, Shinmura Izuru graduated from Japan's elite Tokyo University, where he studied under (among others) Ueda Kazutoshi 上田万年, who was active in the creation and editing of dictionaries designed for use with foreign languages around the turn of the century. Shinmura became involved in the creation and editing of Japanese language dictionaries in the latter part of the Meiji era, at least in part because these activities corresponded to a degree with his own academic interests - he specialised in linguistics, especially the Japanese language. Though Shinmura died in 1967, he is still credited as the official editor on later editions of the dictionary.

Characteristics of the Kōjien

First published in 1955, the Kōjien has to date gone through five editions (see below). As Shinmura stated in the preface to the first edition, it was hoped at its conception that the Kōjien would come to be regarded as the standard by which other dictionaries would be measured. This hope has largely been fulfilled; the Kōjien is now widely regarded as the most authoritative single-volume Japanese language dictionary on the market. The first edition, containing approximately 200,000 definitions, is believed to have sold around one million copies in the fourteen years between its publication and revision. The subsequent four editions have accounted for approximately ten million sales between them, and have seen approximately 20,000 more words added to the initial number.

The Kojien dictionary has a censorship policy, and taboo words such as sexual or very insulting terms are not recorded. The dictionary features a small number of illustrations (about one per page), and mini-biographies of notable people, as well as a kanji reference. The requirement for persons featured in the Kōjien is that they be dead; the living are excluded from its pages.

The Kōjien has been licensed by several makers of electronic dictionaries. Most models include it as the main Japanese-Japanese dictionary. Since 1993, it has also been made available in CD-ROM format.

Editions and Dates of Publication

Edition --- Date of Publication
1st Edition --- 25th May 1955
2nd Edition --- 16th May 1969
3rd Edition --- 6th December 1983
4th Edition --- 15th November 1991
5th Edition --- 11th November 1998

References

Iwanami Shoten Kōjien Home Page (Japanese only) http://www.iwanami.co.jp/kojien/

• Kojien, fifth edition, 1998, ISBN 4000801112
• Kojien, fourth edition, 1991, ISBN 4000801015

Japanese dictionaries

広辞苑 | 廣辭苑