• ``Nelson'' - The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary
  by Andrew Nelson, Tuttle, 1962. The old edition is still available, but there's also a new edition out, but I have not seen it.
  
  
• ``S&H'' - The Kanji Dictionary
  by Mark Spahn and Wolfgang Hadamitzky. First published in 1989 by Nichigai Associates under the name ``Japanese Character Dictionary - With Compound Lookup via Any Kanji,'' revised and republished in 1996 by Tuttle.
  
  
• ``Halpern'' - New Japanese-English Character Dictionary
  [online here] by Jack Halpern, published in 1990 by Kenkyusha and in 1993 by NTC. There is also a learner's version (online here).
  (See it at Amazon.com)

When considering these and others -- which to buy, which are good, which to keep nearby on the shelf, etc. -- there are two primary concerns to keep in mind:

• What indexing method or methods are used to find the entry for a particular character.
• What information is available once you get there.

Information a ``Kanji Dictionary'' Provides

Works might have their PRIMARY GOAL to

• provide meanings of words -
  Provides translations of words from Japanese to English, but has them ordered and grouped via kanji rather than pronunciation. Examples are Nelson, S&H, edict, and the Canon Word Tank (which is also a normal dictionary as well),
  
  
• provide an understanding of how a kanji is used -
  Provide information helpful for the student of Japanese kanji, for study. This might well include words (as is the primary goal of the type above) and data (primary goal of the type below), but this information is only provided as support toward the overal goal of showing how the character is used in Japanese. Important also are discussions of the ``feel'' a character might give a word, examples of use with relevent grammatical comments, notes on common mistakes and areas of confusion, and perhaps stroke-order diagrams. An example is Halpern.
  
  
• provide data about kanji -
  Some might describes in detail information related to a kanji. Its readings, perhaps its encodings via various human and computer encoding standards. Perhaps variant forms, old forms, and forms from other languages. Perhaps its etymology and stroke ordering as well. An example is kanjidic and the JIS X 0208 standard.

If you merely want to look up words

For the most part, these kinds of ``Kanji Dictionaries'' are really ``Word Dictionaries'' with the entries arranged via kanji. In fact, the Japanese title of S&H translates to ``Kanji-English Word Dictionary'', which is really more appropriate than ``The Kanji Dictionary''.

Often, these works limit their attention to jukugo, words composed of combinations of kanji, for the most part giving light or no treatment to the kun'yomi meanings of a character. For example, the character is the ka in `kakeru', `kake', `kakaru', and `kakari'. Yet the many meanings of these stand-alone words are often glossed over or ignored. Contrast this with Halpern below.

For the most part, English translation is simply a word or two -- this is usually enough to give a good indication, but once the reading is known, a ``real'' dictionary should be checked if there are still questions. This makes these works ``glossaries'', not ``dictionaries'', but few make the distinction (heck, I call my server a ``dictionary server'' but it uses edict, which is certainly a glossary).

If you want to study kanji

Halpern is not designed for bulk translation work; it is designed for study. He presents detailed ``core meanings'' of each character, and partitions a character's actual use in the language into senses that helps the student absorb usage patterns. He gives equal attention to all types of uses, including kun'yomi, on'yomi, independent, and special readings. Examples are a mixture of not only isolated words, but phrases and sentences with appropriate grammatical points of interest. (See the dictionary's home page for a lot more information on what it provides.)

To extend on the kakeru example from above, consider what S&H says about this oft-used word:

hang (tr.); put on top of; turn on, start; spend; multiply; (as suffix) begin to, start ...ing

• komo o kakeru - spread a mat
• hakari ni kakeru - weigh on a scale
• megane o kakeru - wear glasses
• hi o kakeru - set fire
• denwa o kakeru - make a phone call, telephone
• nazo o kakeru - pose a riddle
• hoken o kakeru - insure (something)
• meiwaku o kakeru - impose trouble
• shinpai o kakeru - cause someone to worry
• ki ni kakeru - have one's mind upon, take to heart
• jyou o kakeru - fasten a lock
• isha ni kakeru - entrust to a doctor (for treatment)
• jikan o kakeru - spend time (on doing something)
• hachi kakeru ni - 2 times 8

He also provides synonyms and homophones, and occasionally includes interesting side notes on how interesting compounds have been formed. For example, the component characters of (keikoku) tend to mean ``ruin'' and ``country'', yet the word means ``beautiful woman'' and/or ``harlot''. Halpern notes:

`beautiful woman; courtesan' derives from an ancient Chinese legend of a beautiful siren that brought on the downfall of a nation ( ) with her voluptuous charms.

Halpern also provides generous usage notes. For example the four words are all pronounced kaeru and all generally mean ``to exchange''. Yet their meanings have some not-so-subtle differences. He gives examples using each word. Their English are:

• Change a horse into a cow (by magic)
• Use a horse in place of a cow
• Exchange a horse for a cow
• Replace an old horse with a new one.

Halpern also provides a stroke-order diagram, variant and old forms, various calligraphic (handwritten) styles (square, semi-cursive, cursive), common handwritten abbreviations, both Ming and Gothic typeface glyphes, as well as Chinese forms and readings of the character. Japanese readings are indicated as approved (by the Ministry of Education), unapproved but common enough to include, name-only, or special.

Other per-character information includes the traditional radical (with special notations for ``lost radicals''), the frequency-of-use in modern printed Japanese, and The Ministry-of-Education grade designation.

As I said, Halpern is for studying kanji. It is perhaps the one for which the name ``Kanji Dictionary'' is truly applicable. I often use Halpern merely to look up words because I like the indexing method (see below) better than S&H, but I realize that it is hit'n'miss for this. Halpern uses 30,841 distinct words as examples when describing the senses that a character can impart to a word, but the coverage is spotty. For example, is listed under but not . He apparently found that other words better represented the meanings of .

How to Find What You're Looking For

All works should provide an index via reading. Thus, if you know a reading of the character in question, you can check the index at the back which will then point you to the proper entry.

The real question is, what if you don't know the reading but can only see the character? First of all, most methods require that you know how to count strokes when you see a character properly written. If you've never looked at this stuff before, you might be surprised to find that has 3 strokes, while has five (but not the five you might think at first glimpse -- the vertical line is actually two strokes!) Smaller works will often have a stroke-count index, but this is simply too inefficient for larger works. For example, Halpern has 266 characters with eight strokes, Nelson has 381, and S&H has 426.

Traditionally, kanji have been indexed via their radical and stroke count. Halpern's primary index is his SKIP method, which I find extremely useful (see further comments on the radical page).

Looking up words

With Nelson (which I don't use, so maybe I'm wrong), I believe words are only listed via their first component character (as is common with Japanese-Kanji dictionaries). The traditional radical for is , but Nelson lists it under , neither of which I find apparent.

As I've noted, Halpern is not designed to be a dictionary of words, but as it turns out, you can find listed under three characters: , , and , this last one because of the entry (seron wo ayaturu) ``manipulate public opinion.''

Other Lookup Methods and Features

S&H

Other lookup features are

• The outside margins of the page show the radicals with a mark indicating where you are at the moment. This is very useful for quickly finding a radical section -- you just rifle through the pages until the mark comes to the radical you want.
  
  
• At the start of a new radical, a table lists all the characters in the group (including cross references). Even though it adds an extra step to go to the head of a radical's group to scan the table for the character, I find it speeds things up for me. One I locate the character in the table, I can then turn directly to its entry.

Nelson

Halpern

Of course, there is the standard reading index, and in addition, Halpern also provides a number of interesting index methods:

• Via Radical -- For the traditionalist, there is a radical index giving the 214 traditional radicals and the characters that are indexed by them.
  
  
• Radical -- For actually finding entries for the radicals themselves. Halpern gives radicals a main entry, just as he does characters. This affords him the ability to list detailed information about the radical, such as stroke order, a prose description, etymology, etc.

  The Radical Chart lists the 214 traditional radicals, with variants, by stroke count. The radical name (with an English name as well) are provided, as well as the radical's main character entry in the dictionary
  
  

• Kanji Synonym Groups -- A powerful feature, sort of like a kanji thesaurus. Characters (and their indices in the main dictionary) are presented in groups of related meanings. For example, the grouping ``blue and purple colors'' shows six characters with core meanings of blue, deep blue, lapis lazuli (bright blue), dark blue, indigo, and purple. [Note: the English tags that this server's kanji lookup presents are from kanjidic, not Halpern, so will not necessarily match exactly]

  Another example is ``long time periods'', which lists also lists six characters, with meanings such as dynastic period and era.

  All in all there are hundreds of these thesaurus-like entries. I don't know of any other work that even comes close to paralleling this feature.
  
  

• Frequency of Use -- The 2135 most-frequently used characters are listed in order, with English core meanings and main dictionary index number.
  
  
• Jouyou Kanji -- The (as of March 15, 1989) 1945 characters designated for general use by the Japanese Ministry of Education, arranged by the grade level that the character is taught in Japanese public schools.
  
  
• Historical Tables, etc. -- Perhaps of marginal use, he lists information about certain groups of characters, all with their index into the main dictionary.
  • The Signs of the Oriental Zodiac
  • The Five Elements
  • The Ten Calendar Signs
  • The Pentatonic Scale
  • Abbreviation of Place Names

Claimors

Since then I have become friends with Jack, and collaborate with him on some of his projects. Because our meeting was a result of my enthusiastic recommendation of his book, I don't feel there's any ``conflict of interest'' if I continue to enthusiastically recommend his book. Still, I mention our relation here because it seems the thing to do.