Kanji dictionary

[Chris Kern]

Dear all,

My primary kanji dictionary is the limited version of the Kanjigen on
my 8-year old electronic dictionary; it's limited to the JIS 1 and 2
sets (about 6500 kanji). It works fine for most uses, but when
reading kanbun texts I often run into kanji that are not in that
dictionary. Of course I can go to the library and use Morohashi but
I'm hoping to pick up something that's desk-sized but is somewhat more
adequate for kanbun texts.

There are two I've been looking at. One is the actual Kanjigen, not
limited by the old electronic dictionary interface:
http://tinyurl.com/8dykosr (Amazon link)
It has about 17000 characters, the JIS1-4 set and some additional characters.

The second is the Kanjikai:
http://tinyurl.com/98v7dlx
This doesn't seem to have as many kanji (only 12000 or so) but maybe
it's sufficient anyway. I've tried this one out in the library and it
seems to have the characters that I've run into so far that my
electronic dictionary lacks.

Does anyone else, particularly people who do more kanbun than I do,
have any recommendations in this area? The dictionary doesn't need to
be as small as the ones I linked but I'm looking for something at
least semi-portable.

Thank you,
-Chris

[Tucker, John]

Just curious -- what sorts of material do you read in kanbun? There are lots of allusions to classical Chinese texts, the Chinese Text Project is very useful. It has a dictionary that gives you passages in which the characters appear in the texts -- and there are dozens -- that posted off that website. And it's free --- http://ctext.org/

A-317 Brewster Building
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858

________________________________________
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Chris Kern [chris...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 5:21 AM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [PMJS] Kanji dictionary

Dear all,

Thank you,
-Chris

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[Chris Kern]

Thank you; that's a very useful site. I had seen it before but I
didn't realize it had that character glossing feature.

The material I read is eclectic; my research is in pre-modern Genji
commentaries, which quote a wide variety of sources. I have to deal
both with native Chinese sources and Japanese kanbun sources (in
particular the six histories and some of the rite/ceremonial texts
like the Ritsuryo, the Kinpisho, and some of the kanbun diaries).
Also sometimes the commentaries themselves, especially the early ones,
have passages written in kanbun.

Fortunately a lot of these sources have Japanese editions with
yomikudashi, notes, and translations, but some of them don't...also
the commentaries sometimes quote Chinese commentaries to the works
rather than the works themselves. The old meiji-era 漢文大系 is a big
help in this regard because they have a lot of the classical
commentary with kairiten, and this search site:
http://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihp/hanji.htm
is useful since the search results include the major classical
commentaries and the page numbers correspond to recent
Taiwan-published editions that are available.

-Chris

[Tucker, John]

Chris, The cross referencing is amazing. I needed to find some Neo-Confucian remarks about 鬼神 and so went to the Chinese Text Project, clicked on the Song-Ming texts, entered the kanji, and in no time flat there were the passages in the Four Books where kishin are discussed. Once upon a time, I would have been turning pages scanning texts with tired eyes for hours, and coming up with a fraction of what took less than three minutes. The site is a good one to explore -- lots of valuable tools and information.

John A. Tucker, PhD

A-317 Brewster Building
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858

________________________________________
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Chris Kern [chris...@gmail.com]

Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 10:03 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PMJS] Kanji dictionary

[Brian Steininger]

Dear Chris,

I don't think you can go wrong with either of the two dictionaries you
mentioned. My sense is that right now Kanjikai is more popular among the
researchers I know--it seems a little better oriented towards
ancient/medieval Japanese kanbun, and Kanjigen has not been revised in a
long time. However, at a certain point it's really just a matter of
taste--they're both excellent dictionaries for their size.

Best regards,
Brian

--
Brian Steininger
Assistant Professor of Japanese and Asian Studies
Bates College
Roger Williams Hall 211
9 Andrews Road
Lewiston, ME 04240
tel. 207-755-5938
fax. 207-783-8331

[Chris Kern]

Dear Brian,

Thanks for the response. The Kanjigen 5th edition came out in 2010
apparently; I don't know how much revision there is from the 4th
edition though. But as you've said, I've tested out both in the
library and they both seem to work fine so I guess I'll just go with
one of the two.

-Chris

[Richard Bowring]

This has been an interesting discussion for someone who has used Shinjigen for many years, supplemented with Morohashi when necessary.
Kanjikai has a great write-up on the Amazon site, suggesting is really is/was something new. Can anyone provide a comparison of Kanjigen and Kanjikai in more detail please?
Richard Bowring
Cambridge