KOKUGO DICTIONARIES AS TOOLS FOR LEARNERS:PROBLEMS AND POTENTIALTom GALLY
The University of Tokyo
cwpgally@mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstract
For second-language learners, monolingual dictionaries can be useful tools because theyoften provide more detailed explanations of meanings and more extensive vocabulary
coverage than bilingual dictionaries do. While learners of English have access to manymonolingual dictionaries designed specifically to meet their needs, learners of Japanese must
make do with Kokugo dictionaries, that is, monolingual dictionaries intended for native
Japanese speakers. This paper, after briefly describing Kokugo dictionaries in general,
analyzes a typical entry from such a dictionary to illustrate the advantages and challenges of
the use of Kokugo dictionaries by learners of Japanese.

Keywords
monolingual; Japanese; kokugo; dictionary; learners

Izvleček
Enojezični slovarji so lahko koristno orodje pri učenju tujega jezika, saj pogosto ponujajo
bolj podrobne razlage pomenov in pokrivajo bolj obsežno besedišče kot pa dvojezični
slovarji. Medtem ko imajo učenci angleščine kot tujega jezika na voljo veliko enojezičnih
slovarjev, ki so bili izdelani prav za njihove potrebe, pa morajo učenci japonščine uporabljati
enojezične slovarje japonščine, imenovane Kokugo, t.j. slovarje, ki so namenjeni govorcem
japonščine kot maternega jezika. Pričujoči članek - po kratki splošni predstavitvi slovarjev
Kokugo - skozi analizo slovarskega članka iz takega slovarja oriše prednosti in izzive rabeslovarjev Kokugo za učenje japonščine kot tujega jezika.

Ključne besedeenojezični; japonščina; kokugo; slovar; učenci

Acta Linguistica Asiatica, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2012. ISSN: 2232-3317
http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/

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Tom GALLY

1. Introduction
In the past few decades, learners of English as a second language have benefited
from the publication and rapid development of many monolingual dictionaries
designed specifically to meet their needs. These dictionaries, which include Oxford
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s English
Dictionary, and similar volumes from Cambridge, Longman, Macmillan, and MerriamWebster, have incorporated many learner-friendly features, including a controlled
defining vocabulary, greater attention to collocations and idioms both as headwords
and in definitions and examples, extensive use of corpora for meaning explication andexample selection, and new macro- and microstructure designs. (For more informationon these dictionaries, see Cowie, 1999, and Béjoint, 2010, pp. 163–200.) The rapid
innovations in these dictionaries have been driven not only by advances inlexicography and corpus linguistics but also by the huge global market for Englishlearning materials, making learner’s dictionaries, despite the large investment
necessary for their creation, a potentially lucrative source of income for publishers.
Learners of Japanese, however, have not been nearly as fortunate, as there are nomonolingual dictionaries of Japanese currently available that meet the needs ofintermediate and advanced learners.1 Learners fluent in English, Chinese, or Korean,
which have reasonably good bilingual dictionaries with Japanese, might not suffer
significantly from this lack, but speakers of most other languages are at a severe
disadvantage when trying to learn Japanese. Furthermore, at least in the case ofEnglish, most of the bilingual dictionaries used by learners of Japanese were in fact
written for native Japanese speakers and thus lack many features needed by secondlanguage learners, including explanatory definitions for difficult-to-translate
headwords, verb-conjugation categories and other grammatical information, and usage
notes. Perhaps the greatest drawback of bilingual dictionaries published for fluent
Japanese speakers, when considered from the learner’s perspective, is the omission ofheadwords that Japanese users are not likely to seek when using a bilingual dictionary
into another language, including slang, dialect, archaisms, variants, and proper names.
Some of these drawbacks of bilingual dictionaries of Japanese can be overcome
through the use of a type of dictionary often overlooked in Japanese-language
education: monolingual dictionaries of Japanese aimed at native speakers of the1

The monolingual Dictionary of Basic Japanese Usage for Foreigners was published by Japan’s Agency
for Cultural Affairs in 1971. This dictionary incorporated features useful for learners, including
explanatory definitions written in relatively simple language, many example sentences, and fullconjugation information for verbs and adjectives. Although a second edition appeared in 1975 and a third
with about 4,500 headwords in 1990, the dictionary is no longer in print, let alone available in digital form.
Two companion volumes, listed in library catalogs but not consulted for this study, were Dictionary ofChinese Characters for Foreigners [外国人のための漢字辞典 Gaikokujin no Tame no Kanji Jiten](1966) and A Specialized Scientific Dictionary for the Foreigners: Physical Science [外国人のための専門用語辞典〈自然科学系〉 Gaikokujin no Tame no Senmon Yōgo Jiten: Shizen Kagaku Kei] (1966), arealso out of print.

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11

language. Usually called kokugo jisho [国語辞書] or kokugo jiten [国語辞典], these
dictionaries are readily available in both paper and digital versions from commercial
Japanese publishers, and they have many advantages over bilingual dictionaries: theirdefinitions are often explanations of the headword’s meaning, rather than meresynonyms; they indicate conjugation categories of verbs; and, while their inclusion ofslang and other nonstandard language is sometimes limited, they do contain a wider
range of vocabulary than most bilingual dictionaries. Because these dictionaries were
written for native speakers of Japanese, however, they present significant hurdles tolearners, particularly in the comprehensibility of their definitions and examples. This
paper therefore examines the typical features of these monolingual Japanesedictionaries—called Kokugo dictionaries here—and discusses the advantages anddisadvantages of those features for people learning Japanese as a second language.

2. Contemporary Kokugo Dictionaries
A wide range of Kokugo dictionaries are currently available for native speakers,
from the 14-volume Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, a comprehensive historical dictionary of
the language from the earliest recorded times to the present, to small, inexpensive
dictionaries sold in 100-yen stores that are intended mainly to provide the meanings
and orthography of “hard” or often misunderstood words.2 Although dictionaries allalong this spectrum can be used profitably by learners, this paper will concentrate on
two categories of Kokugo dictionaries that are likely to be most useful: midsized
dictionaries that focus on contemporary general vocabulary, and comprehensive
dictionaries that also include historical vocabulary and encyclopedic entries.
Among the many midsized dictionaries aimed at general users are Shinmeikai
Kokugo Jiten, Iwanami Kokugo Jiten, Sanseidō Kokugo Jiten, and Meikyō Kokugo
Jiten. These dictionaries typically claim to have about 70,000 entries, and their paper
editions have between about 1400 and 1900 pages, including front and back matter.
Their headwords, senses, and examples primarily reflect the modern Japanese
language, and they contain few encyclopedic entries. (The second edition of Meikyō
Kokugo Jiten, for example, contains brief entries for Nihon “Japan” and Chūgoku
“Chugoku region; China” but none for Tōkyō or Amerika.)
One-volume comprehensive dictionaries are printed in a larger format and containmore pages, usually around 3000, and claim to have around 230,000 entries. Threecomprehensive dictionaries that, as of 2012, have been updated recently are Kōjien,
Daijirin, and Daijisen. (Many similar dictionaries have been published in the past
century, but most are no longer being updated.) In addition to the contemporary

2

Okimori, Kurashima, Katō, & Makino (1996) contains a full list and descriptions of Kokugo and otherdictionaries published in Japan up through the mid-1990s. Some of the many books in Japanese about thehistory and characteristics of Kokugo dictionaries are Kurashima (1997), Ishiyama (2007), and Kurashima(2010).

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Tom GALLY

vocabulary covered by the midsized dictionaries, the comprehensive dictionaries also
contain archaic headwords and senses, and citations are often taken from classical or
canonical literary works. They also contain many proper names and technical words
that are missing from the midsized dictionaries. Perhaps the most important difference
among these dictionaries for learners is the sense order: while Kōjien orders themultiple senses of a headword with the earliest or most basic meanings first, Daijirin
and Daijisen give the most common contemporary meanings first.
As of 2012, all of the dictionaries named above are available in paper form. Most
are also available in digital formats, which might include cd- and/or dvd-roms, portableelectronic dictionaries, free and/or subscription-based Web sites, and smartphone,tablet, and personal computer applications. Data on dictionary sales in Japan are heldclosely by publishers, but anecdotal evidence, including observations of thedictionaries used by university students and the space allocated to paper dictionaries inbookstores, suggests that the era of paper dictionaries is coming to an end. While
digital versions do offer some distinct advantages to students, including faster lookup
times, intra- and inter-dictionary links, and, on some devices, handwritten input, theactual content of digital Kokugo dictionaries is so far largely identical to that of theirpaper versions. For this reason, and because the rapid progress of digital and network
technology makes it difficult to predict how Kokugo dictionaries might be delivered tousers in coming years, this paper will focus only on the content of dictionary entries,
not their medium of presentation.

3. A Typical Entry in a Midsized Dictionary
To see the advantages and challenges of the use of Kokugo dictionaries by learnersof Japanese, let us examine in detail an entry for a word that an intermediate oradvanced learner might want to look up in a dictionary: the verb satoru. This word waschosen because one of its two main senses is used in general contexts in thecontemporary language while the other is limited to a particular cultural domain. The
entry for satoru from the second print edition of the midsized Meikyō Kokugo Jiten(2010) appears below. This is followed by a detailed explanation of the entry’s
components and the implications of each component for a learner accessing the entry.
In the explanations, the romanization of each component is given in italics for theconvenience of readers.
さと・る【悟る（▹覚る）】〚他五〛➊ものの本質 意味などを（直感的に）はっきりと理解する。また、隠されていたことなどをはっきりと認識する。
「車の重大さを—」「敵に—・られないように注意せよ」➋仏教で、心の迷いを去って永遠の真理を会得する。悟りを開く。「仏法の真理を—」[可能]
悟れる [名] 悟り

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13

3.1 Headword
The headword is listed in kana order based on the pronunciation of its unmarked
imperfective form, さとる satoru, not by its usual orthographic representations (悟るor, less commonly, 覚る). Thus the preceding word in the paper dictionary is さとり
satori and the following word is サドル sadoru. For learners using paper Kokugo
dictionaries, this pronunciation-based listing can be frustrating, as often a word one
wishes to look up appears in a text at least partly in kanji, rather than entirely in kana;
if one does not know the reading of the kanji, one cannot find it easily in a Kokugo
dictionary. 3 This problem is usually alleviated with electronic dictionaries, which,depending on the hardware and software, allow kanji-containing words to be looked up
using cut-and-paste, stylus or finger input, optical character recognition, or selection of
kanji components (multiradical lookup).
In Meikyō, the boundary between the verb stem さと sato- and suffix る -ru is
indicated by a nakaguro, or black dot (・); the same symbol is used in this dictionary
to separate the stems and suffixes of adjectives. Meikyō also uses a hyphen (–) toseparate the parts of compound words; the word サドンデス sadondesu “sudden
death”, for example, appears as a headword as サドン–デス. Neither the black dot nor
the hyphen would appear in those words in a regular text. These markers, which arenormally omitted from bilingual dictionaries, can provide useful clues to learners about
the morphemic structure and etymology of headwords.
One of the challenges for learners using most dictionaries of Japanese, including
all currently available Kokugo dictionaries, is that words can be looked up only by
their canonical, unmarked form. If a reader encounters a conjugated form of the verb
satoru, such as the potential satoreru or the negative passive participle
satorerarenakute, and wants to find the meaning of the word in a dictionary, he or she
must be able to deduce that the plain imperfective form is satoru. A fairly high level ofgrammatical knowledge is therefore necessary before a learner can use such
dictionaries effectively.4

3.2 Orthography
Because this verb can be written not only in kana but also with kanji, the two usualkanji representations follow the headword in brackets: 悟る（▹覚る）. The lack of any
marking or further bracketing of the first version, 悟る, indicates that this is a standard

3

Some printed Kokugo dictionaries, including Iwanami Kokugo Jiten and Daijirin, have indexes of kanji
and “hard-to-read” kanji combinations (jukugo), but those indexes exclude many word forms that learners
would need to look up. A compete kanji and kanji-compound index to the second edition of thecomprehensive dictionary Daijirin was published in 1997 as a separate volume (Kanjibiki Gyakuhiki
Daijirin), but its bulk makes it unwieldy for casual use.
4
An exception is Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC, a free online Japanese-English dictionary. Searches for mostconjugated or declined forms of words lead to the standard headword forms.

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Tom GALLY

written form of the verb. The second version, 覚 る , is both enclosed in curved
parentheses, indicating that it is a nonstandard form, and marked with the symbol ▹,indicating that, while the kanji 覚 appears on the Jōyō Kanji ( 常用漢字)
常用漢字 list of
characters designated by the government for everyday use, sato- is not an officiallydesignated reading for that character. Other symbols are used in this dictionary toindicate when kanji do not appear on the Jōyō list at all, when a reading is in an annex
to the Jōyō Kanji list, and when a combination of characters has a special reading.
This detailed information about the status of different written forms of words canbe useful to learners for at least two reasons. When a reader learns from a dictionarythat the written form of a word he or she has encountered in a text is nonstandard, thereader can often infer something about the text’s provenance: it might predate thegovernment’s postwar orthographic standards, it might not have been subjected to therigorous editing applied to newspapers and some other publications, or it might reflect
the author’s individual preferences or literary sensibility. The orthographic labelingalso helps the learner decide what form to use when writing in Japanese; a personcomposing a university report or a job application letter, for example, might decide touse the standard forms even if he or she prefers the nonstandard forms.

3.3 Part-of-Speech Information
The next item in the entry, 他 五 , consists of two abbreviations of verbal
categories. The character 他 indicates that the headword is a transitive verb (他動詞
他動詞
tadōshi), while the character 五 shows that it follows the godan (五段五段)
五段 conjugation
pattern. For other headwords, this information might be 名, for 名詞 (meishi, “noun”);
形, for 形容詞 (keiyōshi, “adjective”); 形動,形動 for 形容動詞 (keiyō dōshi, “adjectivalverb”); 代, for 代名詞 (daimeishi , “pronoun”); etc.
This grammatical information, especially about verb categories, is usually omitted
from bilingual dictionaries aimed at native speakers of Japanese. Learners opening a
Kokugo dictionary for the first time, however, are likely to be confused by them, as theabbreviations might refer to grammatical categories that the learners know by very
different names. Godan conjugation verbs, for example, are often called “consonantstem” verbs in textbooks of Japanese written in English, and understanding the term
godan and similar expressions requires familiarity with Japanese grammar as it has
been taught in Japanese schools. Kokugo dictionaries also often indicate the categories
of verbs for the literary language (文語文語 bungo), which many students do not need tolearn. In order to get the most out of this section of Kokugo dictionary entries,
therefore, students would have to make a conscious effort to learn the abbreviations
and their meanings in the context of traditional Japanese school grammar.

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3.4 Definitions
This entry for satoru has two senses, marked with the numbers ➊ and ➋. Withineach sense is a definition followed by an example or two.
The definition of the first sense is ものの本質 意味などを（直感的に）はっきりと理解する。また、隠されていたことなどをはっきりと認識する。 Mono
no honshitsu ya imi nado o (chokkanteki ni) hakkiri to rikai suru. Mata, kakusarete ita
koto nado o hakkiri to ninshiki suru. This might be translated as “To understand clearly(intuitively) the essence, meaning, etc. of something. Or, to recognize clearlysomething that is hidden.”
The definition of the second sense is 仏教で、心の迷いを去って永遠の真理を会得する。悟りを開く。 Bukkyō de, kokoro no mayoi o satte eien no shinri o etoku
suru. Satori o hiraku, which might be translated as “In Buddhism, to cast away
confusions of the soul and to obtain eternal truth; to achieve satori [enlightenment]”.
It is here, in the definitions, that Kokugo dictionaries offer the greatest potential
for learners of Japanese but also present the greatest challenges. To see why, compare
the above translation of the first sense with the corresponding definitions in three
Japanese-English dictionaries (sense specifiers in Japanese have been omitted):
perceive ((that)); realize ((that)) (Shogakukan Progressive Japanese-English
Dictionary, 4th ed.)1 see; notice; perceive; discern; guess; sense; wake to…; be alive to…; be awareof…; get wind of…
2 understand; comprehend; apprehend; realize. (Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English
Dictionary, 5th ed.)(1) to perceive; to sense; to discern; (2) to understand; to comprehend; to realize (Jim
Breen’s WWWJDIC)

While the bilingual dictionaries offer only short glosses, the Meikyō definition
gives a full explanation, incorporating semantic elements that would be difficult todiscern from the English translations. These include honshitsu ya imi nado “essence,
meaning, etc.”, as examples of things that might be the objects of the verb, andchokkanteki ni “intuitively” and hakkiri to “clearly”, as modifiers of the verb rikai suru
“to understand”. The second half of the first definition can also aid the learner’s
understanding by indicating that the object of the verb might be something that has
been hidden.
For the second sense, where bilingual dictionaries give some variation on “bespiritually awakened; attain enlightenment” (Progressive), the Kokugo dictionary
provides helpful additional information, particularly the explicit reference to Buddhism
and the explanation kokoro no mayoi o satte “cast away confusions of the soul”. A
reader unfamiliar with Buddhism and seeing the word satoru used in the Buddhist

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Tom GALLY

sense for the first time is likely to understand the concept much better after reading the
Meikyō definition than the English glosses.
Most definitions in Kokugo dictionaries are similarly explanatory, and as suchthey should be more useful to learners than mere glosses. The problem, of course, isthat learners must be able to read and understand the explanations. Because thedictionaries are written for native speakers of Japanese of normal educational
attainment, the definitions assume that users have a fairly wide vocabulary of Japaneseand know at least the Jōyō Kanji. While the first definition of satoru might beunderstandable to higher-intermediate learners, the second definition, in particular thetransitive use of the verb 去る saru “to get rid of something undesirable”, will be moredifficult to grasp. Most learners would have to look up at least several words containedin the definition, a time-consuming task that, while not uneducational in its own right,
would be distracting if the leaners’ immediate purpose is to understand what satoru
means in a particular text. It is this issue—the difficulty in understanding definitions—that presents the greatest hurdle to the effective use of Kokugo dictionaries by learnersof Japanese.

3.5 Examples
The entry for satoru contains three short examples. For the first sense, theexamples are 車の重大さを— kuruma no jūdaisa o [satoru] “realize the importanceof automobiles” and 敵に—・られないように注意せよ Teki ni [sato]rarenai yō ni
chūi se yo “Be careful not to be noticed by the enemy.” For the second sense, theexample is 仏 法 の 真 理 を — Buppō no shinri o [satoru] “realize the truth of
Buddhism”. (Like many Kokugo dictionaries, Meikyō replaces the headword or
headword stem with a dash (—) in examples, presumably to save space.) While brief,these examples can provide useful information to learners: the use of satoru with theobject particle o in the first and third examples reinforces the fact that this is atransitive verb; the use of jūdaisa “importance” and shinri “truth” as the verb’s object
shows that it often takes an abstract noun as an object; the second example shows that,when used in the passive, the verb can take a personal noun as its subject. All of these
insights, of course, assume that the reader knows the readings and understands themeanings of the other words in the examples; if the examples contain unknown
vocabulary, it can be a difficult, time-consuming task to figure out the meanings ofexamples, especially with paper dictionaries.
As with most examples in midsized Kokugo dictionaries, the origins of thesephrases and sentences are not indicated. In general, such dictionaries seem to use acombination of verbatim corpus examples, modified corpus examples, and examples
invented by the lexicographers to illustrate meanings and show typical collocations.5
5The examples (as well as definitions) in one widely used Kokugo dictionary, Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten,
have been the target of criticism, praise, and affection because of their specificity, opinionatedness, andKokugo Dictionaries as Tools for Learners: …

17

Comprehensive dictionaries also contain many examples with citations, usually fromliterary, often classical, sources. Of the six examples for three senses of satoru in thesixth edition of Kōjien (2008), for example, two are from the 11th-century Tale ofGenji and one from the 13th-century Tale of the Heike. The third edition of Daijirin(2006) has an example from 20th-century literature, the 1906 novel Kusamakura(English title: The Three-Cornered World) by Sōseki Natsume. This heavy use ofexamples from classical and canonical literature—a result of the dictionaries’ historicalassociation with the scholastic field kokugoka (国語科), that is, the study of Japan’snational language and literature—contrasts sharply with the examples in recent
English-English learners’ dictionaries, which rely largely on citations taken or adaptedfrom corpora that cover a wide variety of contemporary spoken and written sources.
As a first impression, the examples in midsized Kokugo dictionaries are likely toseem more accessible to learners than those in the larger comprehensive dictionaries.
Often, however, mixed in with the comprehensive dictionaries’ literary examples arecontemporary phrasal examples similar to those in midsized dictionaries; if learners
know how to distinguish the contemporary from the classical examples, they canobtain as much benefit from the examples in the comprehensive dictionaries as fromthose in the midsized dictionaries.

3.6 Other Information
The entry for satoru in Meikyō ends with two derived forms of the headword, 悟
れる satoreru and 悟り satori; the abbreviation 可能 kanō indicates that the former isthe potential form of the verb and the abbreviation 名 mei that the latter is the nominal
form. Other information that might be included in entries in this and other Kokugo
dictionaries include the historical kana spelling of the headword, an abbreviation
indicating the headword’s pitch accent pattern, 6 etymologies, grammar and usage
notes, and information about synonyms and antonyms. In addition to the entries
themselves, many dictionaries also contain explanatory columns on meaning andusage, illustrations, appendices on various topics, and other supplements designed togive “added value” to the dictionaries and make them more attractive to consumers.

occasional humor (see, for example, Nishiyama et al., 1992, and Akasegawa, 1996). The eccentricity ofShinmeikai’s examples is probably a disadvantage for learners, but its examples have advantages as well,particularly their larger number compared with other dictionaries of the same size and the inclusion ofbrief glosses to explain the meaning of idiomatic expressions. For example, the entry for the noun sanaka
contains the examples 夏の—〔＝暑い盛り〕 natsu no [sanaka] (= atsui sakari) ‘the sanaka of summer(= the hottest period)’ and 冬の—〔＝最も寒い時〕 fuyu no [sanaka] (= mottomo samui toki) ‘thesanaka of winter (= the coldest time)’. The brief explanations, though intended for native speakers, can be
useful for learners as well. No other Kokugo dictionary offers such extensive glossing of examples.
6
Of the dictionaries mentioned in this paper, only Shinmeikai and Daijirin give accent information. When
asked by the author about the widespread omission of this important element of Japanese pronunciationfrom Japanese dictionaries, several Japanese lexicographers have pointed out that pitch accent in Japanesevaries widely by dialect and that native Japanese speakers rarely seek that information in dictionaries.

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Tom GALLY

4. An Imperfect Yet Still-Valuable Tool
Compared with English-English learners’ dictionaries, which incorporate a wide
range of useful innovations made possible by recent advances in corpus linguistics andlexicographic theory and practice, Kokugo dictionaries are not nearly as useful tools
for students of Japanese. The vocabulary of definitions and examples is not controlled
sufficiently for learners, the grammatical information is inadequate for people whohave not yet mastered Japanese grammar, and the word-lookup system, especially withpaper versions, can be frustrating for students still learning kanji. These inadequacies
are, of course, due to the dictionaries’ omission of features that are usually not neededby native Japanese speakers.
Nevertheless, Kokugo dictionaries do offer some advantages over bilingual
dictionaries. Their explanatory definitions can often be enlightening to a learner who
has been unable to figure out what a word means based on brief bilingual glosses. The
information on orthography, grammar, and usage is more detailed than that in manybilingual dictionaries, especially those aimed at native Japanese speakers. The larger
comprehensive dictionaries define many archaic, slang, dialect, and technical words
that might be difficult to find elsewhere, and their compact explanations of Japanesepeople, places, and things can greatly assist readers trying to learn not only theJapanese language but also the history and culture of Japan. Perhaps most importantly,
like all monolingual dictionaries, Kokugo dictionaries offer an immersive experiencein the language: beginning students, who might struggle even to find headwords listed
in the yet-to-be-mastered kana order, are at least exposed to the Japanese writing
system while trying to use the dictionaries, while more advanced learners will have achance to guess at the meanings of words that they are likely to encounter again in the
future. Combined with the explanatory definitions, this immersion also helps to protect
learners from one of the greatest dangers of bilingual dictionary use: assuming that aword given as the translation of a headword in a dictionary can be used to translate thatsame word in any context.
Of course, Japanese learners would benefit even more from learners’ dictionaries
similar to those available for English. Unfortunately, however, no such dictionaries
exist today, and the author has not heard of any under preparation. The reason is not
hard to guess: the number of learners of Japanese is tiny compared to that of English,
and commercial publishers, already suffering from a drop-off in sales of theirconventional dictionaries, cannot make the huge, long-term investment necessary todesign and produce an entirely new type of dictionary. Until the Japanese government,or perhaps a private foundation, decides to support such a project in the future, it seems
likely that Japanese learners who want the advantages of a monolingual dictionary willcontinue to need to use Kokugo dictionaries, imperfect as they may be.

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References
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Ishiyama, M. [石山茂利夫]. (2007). Kokugo jisho: Dare mo shiranai shusshō no himitsu [国語辞書 誰も知らない出生の秘密]. Tōkyō: Sōshisha [草思社].
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Kurashima, N. [倉島長正]. (2010). Kokugo jisho 100-nen: Nihongo o tsukamaeyō to kutō shita
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Tōkyō: Ohfu [おうふう].
Nishiyama, S., & QQQ no Kai [西山里美と QQQ の会]. (1992). Jisho ga konna niomoshirokute ii kashira: Sanseidō “Shimeikai kokugo jiten” shukan ni ateta santsū notegami [辞書がこんなに面白くていいかしら 三省堂『新 解国語辞典』主幹に宛てた三通の手紙]. Tōkyō: JICC.
Okimori, T. [沖森卓也], Kurashima, T. [倉島節尚], Katō, T. [加藤知己], & Makino, T. [牧野武則]. (1996). Nihon jisho jiten [日本辞書辞典]. Tōkyō: Ohfu [おうふう].

Dictionaries
Daijirin [大辞林] (3rd ed.). (2006). Tōkyō: Sanseidō [三省堂].
Daijisen [大辞泉] (1st ed., revised). (1998). Tōkyō: Shōgakukan [小学館].
Dictionary of basic Japanese usage for foreigners [外国人のための基本語用例辞典
Gaikokujin no tame no kihongo yōrei jiten] (3rd ed.). (1990). Tōkyō: Printing Bureau,
Ministry of Finance [大蔵省印刷局 Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku].
Iwanami kokugo jiten [岩波国語辞典] (7th ed.). (2011). Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店].
Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC. Retrieved from http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgibin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C
Kanjibiki gyakuhiki daijirin [漢字引き・逆引き大辞林]. (1997). Tōkyō: Sanseidō [三省堂].
Kenkyusha’s new Japanese-English dictionary [研究社新和英大辞典 Kenkyūsha shin Wa-Ei
daijiten] (5th ed.). (2003). Tōkyō: Kenkyūsha [研究社].
Kōjien [広辞苑] (6th ed.). (2008). Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店].
Meikyō kokugo jiten [鏡国語辞典] (2nd ed.). (2010). Tōkyō: Taishūkan [大修館].

Nihon kokugo daijiten [日本国語大辞典] (2nd ed.). (2001). Tōkyō: Shōgakukan [小学館].
Sanseidō kokugo jiten [三省堂国語辞典] (6th ed.). (2007). Tōkyō: Sanseidō [三省堂].
Shogakukan progressive Japanese-English dictionary [小学館プログレッシブ和英中辞典
Shōgakukan puroguresshibu Wa-Ei chūjiten] (4th ed.). (2011). Tōkyō: Shōgakukan [小学館].
Shinmeikai kokugo jiten [新明解国語辞典] (7th ed.). (2011). Tōkyō: Sanseidō [三省堂].