Author Bran

The Junior Anchor English-Japanese Japanese-English Dictionary (2001)

Bran

General Details

Title: ジュニア・アンカー英和・和英事典 第四版 (The Junior Anchor English-Japanese Japanese-English Dictionary 4th Edition)
Volumes: 1
Language: Japanese
Publisher: 学習研究社 (Gakken)
Year: 2001
Pages: 1640

This volume is two dictionaries bound together as one; they are each separately paginated and can be bought as separate parts.
The target audience for these dictionaries is a Japanese middle school student learning English as a foreign language. The front endpapers have a colorful representation of the English alphabet, and the back endpapers feature political maps of the United States and the United Kingdom.

The first section is The Junior Anchor English-Japanese Dictionary (ジュニア・アンカー英和辞典) 4th Edition. It is 816 pages long. There is a section at the beginning of 56 color, glossy pages which consist of a visual dictionary (linked to the included audio CD), conversation guide, holiday guide, and a photo guide to the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. There is a comprehensive guide on how to use the dictionary (meant more for the parent), followed by a list of all of the illustrations, photographs, and diagrams found within the main text. There is also a list of grammatical help boxes (e.g. telling the difference between remember doing and remember to do), conversation guides, and fun wordplay sections (riddles, jokes, anagrams, palindromes, and tongue twisters). The dictionary contains approximately 12,800 entries and idioms. The most important 101 words for middle school students of English to learn are marked with three asterisks, the next top 406 words are marked with two asterisks, and the remaining top 1,000 words are marked with a single asterisk. The main text of the dictionary is followed by a simplified how-to-use guide for the student, with plenty of cartoon illustration, a guide to English pronunciation, a simplified English grammar, and a collection of well-known English children's songs (e.g. Old MacDonald Had a Farm) which all have recordings on the included audio CD. Finally, the dictionary has a guide on composing letters in English and a table of irregular verb forms.

The Junior Anchor Japanese-English Dictionary (ジュニア・アンカー和英辞典) 4th Edition follows. It is 736 pages long. It also has a short section of 32 color, glossy pages at its beginning, with further conversation guides, a guide to letter writing, and a bilingual introduction to Japan. This includes a map with landmarks, a guide to the seasons, cultural topics, food, and a guide to Japan's school system. There is then a guide on how to use the dictionary (very similar to the one of the preceding dictionary). This dictionary has approximately 14,300 entries. Entries with two asterisks (there are no three asterisk words here) make up the 460 most important words, and entries with a single asterisk make up the most important 1,000 words. There are numerous conversation guides scattered throughout the main dictionary. The main dictionary is followed by a guide to English as used in the classroom, a brief guide to English verb endings, and the same table of irregular verb forms from the English-Japanese dictionary.

These two dictionaries, though meant for middle-school Japanese students, would also work well as a dictionary for an early learner of Japanese who has already been introduced to some basic kanji. There are no furigana provided with the kanji. The example sentences are very short and grammatically simple, and the asterisks accompanying some of the words provide a guide to what constitutes a basic working vocabulary. There are not as many illustrations in this dictionary as there are in others, but the ones that are there are extremely well chosen and provide clarity to minute word usage distinctions.

Sample Entries

I try to look up "umbrella" and "Saint Louis" in all of the reference works I feature on here in order to provide a common basis of comparison between them. Although there are some proper nouns in this dictionary (e.g. Winnie-the-Pooh, Chicago, Zeus), "St. Louis" doesn't make the cut. It is included on the political map of the United States, and a photo of the Gateway Arch is shown in the English-Japanese Dictionary's color page section, but it does not have a proper entry of its own. "Umbrella" can be found in the English-Japanese dictionary on page 697:

*um·brel·la [ʌmbrélə アンブレラ] 名 (福 umbrellas [-z]) かさ、こうもりがさ、雨がさ（➤女性用の「日がさ」はparasol）.
put up an umbrella　かさをさす。
Take this umbrella with you.　このかさを持っていきなさい。

"Umbrella" (or, rather, かさ) can be found on page 143 in the Japanese-English dictionary:

*かさ　傘　（雨がさ）an umbrella [アンブレラ];　（女性用の日がさ）　a parasol [パラソ（ー）ル]
▶折りたたみがさ　a folding umbrella
▶かさをさす　open [put up] an umbrella
▶雨が降るといけないから、かさを持っていきなさい。Take an umbrella with you in case it rains.
かさ立て　an umbrella stand

The Great Japanese Dictionary (1989)

Bran

General Details

Title: 日本語大辞典
Volumes: 1
Language: Japanese
Publisher: 講談社
Year: 1989
Pages: 2304

This is a pretty heavy book. The full title is 講談社　カラー版　日本語大辞典, or The Great Japanese Dictionary (Kodansha Color Edition), and the pages are filled with color photographs and illustrations, so the paper is a little thicker than what is typically used in large dictionaries. This paper is super glossy as a result, making the dictionary hard to photograph. This dictionary is intended to be a comprehensive Japanese monolingual dictionary, including basic kanji information and foreign words. A sizable number of entries (but by no means all) include a simple English translation. The dictionary also contains popular and geographic names, including book titles, historical figures, etc.

At the beginning of the dictionary is an introductory essay, followed by a guide to the dictionary's features and a list of contributors and photograph sources. There is a listing of radicals and kanji by stroke order to help identify where each can be found in the main text: each kanji has a small entry within the dictionary under its primary on or Chinese reading. The ~8600 kanji listings in the dictionary proper list the radical for each character, as well as its JIS Code, stroke number, primary readings, and a very brief description of its meaning. The 154 pages of appendices following the main text include guides to modern and historical orthography, conjugation forms, letter and postcard writing, report writing, polite language, wedding speeches, funerary greetings, addressing gifts, and telephoning. There is also a guide to Chinese folk sayings, an overview of the zodiac, a guide to counters, a map of Japan and its prefectures, a timeline of Japanese literature, the Hyakunin Isshu, a guide to seasonal words, a guide to weather terms, star charts, moon phases, weights and measures, flags of the world, road signs, cartographic information, a guide to braille and sign language, an illustrated guide to traditional patterns, a swatched guide to 350 color names, and a list of alphabetic abbreviations.

Sample Entries

I try to look up the same two entries, "umbrella" and "Saint Louis," in order to provide a basis of comparison between the various reference works featured on this site. "Umbrella" (傘) can be found on page 342 (the kanji character 傘 has a separate entry on page 794 under its reading of san); the accompanying illustration shows two different family crests ("three umbrellas" and "open umbrella") and is meant to accompany the third definition:

かさ　［傘］ ① 雨・雪・日ざしなどを避けるためにかざす柄のついた用具。から傘・こうもり傘・日傘の総称。さしがさ。umbrella 用例 — をさす。数え方 一本・一張り。②①の形をしているもの。きのこの上部など。③紋所の名。開いた傘、閉じた傘、花傘などを紋章化。→図　→キノコ図

Umbrella [umbrella] ① A tool attached to a handle held aloft in order to avoid sunshine, snow, rain, etc. Generic name for the paper umbrella, Western-style umbrella, and parasol. Parasol. umbrella. Usage Example To hold an umbrella. Counter One long cylindrical thing, one set. ② A thing having the shape of ①. The top part of a mushroom, etc. ③ The name of family crests. Crest of arms like "open umbrella," "closed umbrella," "flower umbrella," etc. →Illustration　→Mushroom Illustration

The entry on "Saint Louis" can be found on page 1115:

セント・ルイス　［Saint Louis］ アメリカ中北部、ミズーリ州東部の商工業都市。ミシシッピ川とミズーリ川の合流点に発達した河港。人口四五・三万（一九八八）。

Saint Louis [Saint Louis] A commercial/industrial city in the Eastern part of the state of Missouri, in the middle-Northern part of the United States. River port developed at the confluence point of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Population 453,000 (1988).

The Book of Knowledge (1945)

Bran

General Details

Title: The Book of Knowledge
Volumes: 20 (bound into 10 books)
Language: English
Publisher: The Grolier Society Inc.
Year: 1945
Pages:7580

My copy of The Book of Knowledge: The Children's Encyclopedia is 20 volumes bound into 10. The books are copiously illustrated, with woodcuts, reproductions of artwork, photographs, and even a number of color plates. This set has a couple of similarities to the World Book volumes of that time: first, like The World Book, The Book of Knowledge underwent continuous revision, so no two printings are exactly alike. The volumes are also continuously numbered, so that volume 9/10, for example, contains pages 3025 to 3772.

This set is unlike other works featured on this site in that it is not arranged alphabetically. This is done purposefully, as mentioned in multiple prefatory essays, to encourage reading for pleasure. In the "The Purpose and the Plan" on page 9 it is stated: "The work has been planned, not so much to make learning easy, as to make it interesting. [...] The departments of The Book of Knowledge are distributed throughout the set, one or more sections appearing in almost every volume. This distribution has its root in sound psychology and has been found to be one of the strongest features of this work. The pedagogical reason is this: the average child can not concentrate long upon those subjects which require close attention. After a comparatively short period, he must change his occupation or rest." An article on the astronomical significance of the Earth is followed by one on the history and construction of bridges. After reading about fantastical creatures like the unicorn and sphinx, the reader is presented with an article on the Panama Canal. The "departments" of knowledge include "The Earth" (astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, and meteorology), "Plant Life," "Animal Life," "Our Own Life," "Familiar Things," "Literature," "Stories," "Famous Books," "Wonder Questions," "All Countries," "The United States," "Canada," "Men and Women," "Golden Deeds," "Poetry," "Fine Arts," and "Things to Make and Things to Do."

This feature is repeatedly touted; in his introduction, John H. Finley writes: "It is not like a grown-up encyclopedia, a work of reference which one does not think of reading consecutively or for pleasure (though I have myself read through an encyclopedia of several volumes and found it intensely interesting and profitable reading). This is an encyclopedia in that it gives the child or youth possession of the whole cycle of existence and circle of truth to which he is entitled by birth. The city boy and the country boy find themselves inhabitants of a universe a thousand times more wonderful and interesting than that which most of their elders knew at their age or dreamed of. The facts of physics, biology, astronomy, history and language learned in these boyhood, girlhood days are never forgotten. Through them the child has inextricably woven into his being the life of the race and of the earth, who might otherwise be only a child of a certain valley or prairie, or of a certain street" (3).

Leonard Power's "A Unique Aid in Elementary Education" essay echoes the same sentiment - this set for children is superior to others precisely because it is not alphabetically arranged: "In its sheer power to delight children lies, I think, the greatest value of The Book of Knowledge. Rarely, indeed, are whole sets of books endowed with such power. Other reference works for children attain it to a degree corresponding with their willingness to break up the mechanically alphabetical continuity of their arrangement. But The Book of Knowledge has always held to the sound psychological arrangement appropriate for juveniles, yet providing a kit of tools (indexes) adequate for unlocking any particular door to knowledge" (8).

Sample Entries

To provide fair comparison between all of the works featured in my Reference Work Guide, I try to look up the same entries in each: "umbrella" and "Saint Louis." Due to the unique arrangement of topics in this work, I have to first consult volume 20. This final volume contains a general index, a chronology of the events of World War II, a poetry index, and the full texts of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. "Umbrella" has no entry in the general index, but "St. Louis" can be found on page 7458:

St. Louis. One of the greatest commercial centres in the U.S. 20 miles below the junction of the Missouri with the Mississippi, in Missouri. The river is crossed here by a bridge 2,225 feet long, connecting the city with East St. Louis. Finely built, the city has three cathedrals and two universities, but is famous chiefly for its great manufacture of tobacco, over 80,000,000 pounds of which are annually produced. Other industries include smelting, meat-packing, publishing, flour milling, foundries, and leather and clothing manufactures.
commerce and industries, 17-6046
fur-trading centre, 18-6426
iron and steel industry, 17-6038
Jefferson memorial, note and picture, 17-6047
scene of World's Fair (1904), 3-864
Pictures, 17-6047

Most of the St. Louis references come from an article in volume 17 on "The North Central States Part II" (pp. 6037-6048). St. Louis's iron industry is mentioned on page 6038: "St. Louis once had many blast furnaces. Ore was brought from Pilot Knob and Iron Mountain, a hundred miles away in the Ozarks. As late as 1880 St. Louis was spoken of as the 'City of the Iron Crown.' When the rich deposits of the Ozarks were exhausted the industry declined. Recently Roberts' coke oven, which makes excellent coke out of Illinois coal, has been invented. Across the Mississippi River from St. Louis coke ovens and blast furnaces have been erected. Ore can be secured either from Minnesota or from the rich deposits of Alabama, and a plan is under way to bring the Minnesota ore by way of the Mississippi River. The market for the product will be chiefly in the South and the Southwest. St. Louis may again become the 'City of the Iron Crown.'"

St. Louis is mentioned again later in the article in a section on the changing importance of river transportation in the region: "Commerce on the Mississippi River has come to be of less importance. There are several reasons. The railroads have been built with few curves from one important commercial centre to another. The winding pathway of the river increases the distance from one river port to another. Railroads can operate throughout the year. The Mississippi, especially above St. Louis, is closed to navigation for a part of the winter season. During the latter part of the summer season the water may be too low for the larger boats and barges, and the channel also shifts, and snags form. [...] Large sums have been spent to improve the navigation of the Mississippi and its tributaries, but without much plan. It is hoped that a complete plan will be worked out. The railroads took commerce away from the rivers, but they cannot always carry it all. The Federal Government has established a barge line between St. Louis and New Orleans, and modern docks have been built at St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. The Ohio River once had a very important commerce in coal and iron and steel products. Recently barges have brought iron and steel goods from Pittsburgh to St. Louis. It is expected that river boats will soon be making regular trips between St. Louis and St. Paul. Transporting heavy products like coal and iron by boat is economical; but we shall probably never see a return of the old days of bustling river traffic" (6040; 6044).

St. Louis is briefly compared to Chicago a couple of times in the article: "While Chicago is the largest meat-packing centre, other cities farther west, as St. Paul, Omaha, Kansas City and St. Louis, are also important. [...] In the early part of the last century, St. Louis was larger than Chicago, and Cincinnati was larger than Cleveland. Now, Chicago is over three times as large as St. Louis, and Cleveland is about twice as large as Cincinnati. The lake cities began to push ahead of the river cities when canals were built. One canal connected Cleveland with the Ohio River, another canal connected Chicago with the Illinois River. The lake cities reached out and captured commerce that had been going to the river cities" (6044; 6046). St. Louis then gets its own full paragraph, as well as a few photographs on the opposing page: "St. Louis was founded on the Mississippi River at a favorable site about twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri River. Its location between the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio rivers gave it an early advantage when the rivers were the chief arteries of commerce. To-day the rivers are of less importance. St. Louis now has twenty-six railroad lines extending into its trade territory, and is called the gateway to the Southwest. Its location has made it a large wholesale centre. The food and allied products industry ranks next. St. Louis is very fortunate in that it manufactures so many different things that a business depression along a few lines does not affect it as much as it would affect many other cities" (6046).

The article from volume 3 is "The Story of Fairs" (pp. 858-864). Saint Louis is here mentioned briefly: Other noted American expositions include the following: The Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901; the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, celebrating the Louisiana Purchase, which reached a total attendance of 19,694,855 and cost $15,000,000; the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Oregon, in 1905; the Panama-Pacific Exposition, held at San Francisco from February to December, 1915, to mark the opening of the Panama Canal; and the Philadelphia Sesqui-Centennial of 1926" (864). Finally, St. Louis is briefly mentioned in volume 18's article "The Western States Part 1," in a section on fur-trading: "Having secured a large number of furs, the traders returned and sold then [sic] in cities or fur-trading posts. It was at this time that St. Louis became a fur-trading post. Even now the city of St. Louis is the centre of fur-trading in this country, although there are so many other larger industries in the city now that few people know that it is a fur centre" (6426).