How to Search via Kanji

Japanese-Friendly Browsers

If your browser is Japanese-friendly, you can simply cut-and-paste, or use some kind of FEP to insert EUC-encoded kanji directly into the search text field of the main dictionary page. If you use Japanese text directly, the ``Japanese Search'' and ``English Search'' selection doesn't matter, as that only governs if the letters you type should be taken as romaji or English.

Everyone Else

If you know the JIS code for the character, you can insert the character by writing ``!####'' in the search string. For example, the word 日本 (``Japan'') is made up of the two characters whose JIS codes are 467c and 4b5c. You could search for all entries that contained ``日本'' by searching for ``!467c!4b5c'' (without the quotes, of course). If you use the default ``word starting with pattern'', you'll find words beginning with 日本. Follow this link to see the main dictionary server with this example set up.

Note that when you insert Japanese text in this way, the ``Japanese Search'' and ``English Search'' selection doesn't matter, as that only governs if the letters you type should be taken as romaji or English. However, if you use ``combo searches'', it does still matter for the non-raw parts.

For example, searching for ``!467c!4b5c AND NOT ENGLISH japan'' would find entries that began with 日本, but didn't have the English ``japan'' anywhere in them. If the ``Japanese/English'' selector were on ``English'', then you could omit the ``ENGLISH'' if you wanted.

Finding the JIS Code

Not too many people go around memorizing the entire JIS code, so I've added a way to look up a character: the kanji lookup page. The head of each resultant entry shows the character and the ``!'' code (here is a sample result). Once you find the codes of the characters you want, you can put them together to form a search.

Comments appreciated
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