Four corner method
Encyclopedia
The Four Corner Method (literal translation) is a character input method
used for encoding
Chinese character
s into either a computer or a manual typewriter, using four or five numerical digit
s per character
. The Four Corner Method is also known as the Four Corner System.
The four digits encode the shapes found in the four corners of the symbol, top-left to bottom-right. Although this does not uniquely identify a Chinese character, it leaves only a very short list of possibilities. A fifth digit can be added to describe an extra part above the bottom-right if necessary.
(王雲五), the editor in chief at Commercial Press Ltd., China. Its development was based mainly on contributions by the Russian scholar Otto Rosenberg
in the early 20th century, as well as experiments by Lin Yutang
and others. Its original purpose was to aid telegraphers in looking up Chinese telegraph code
(CST) numbers in use at that time from long lists of characters. This was mentioned by Wang Yunwu in an introductory pamphlet called Sijiaohaoma Jianzifa in 1926. Introductory essays for this pamphlet were written by Cai Yuanpei
and Hu Shi.
In the 1950s, lexicographers in the People's Republic of China
changed the poem somewhat in order to avoid association with Hu Shi, although the contents remain generally unchanged. For various reasons, his name was "unmentionable" at the time the new version was composed. The 1950s version is as follows:
Several other notes:
There have been scores, maybe hundreds, of such numerical and alpha-numerical systems proposed or popularized (such as Lin Yutang's "Instant Index", Trindex, Head-tail, Wang An's Sanjiahaoma, Halpern); some Chinese refer to these generically as "sijiaohaoma" (after the original pamphlet) though this is not correct.
The Wang Yun-wu Da Cidian (Wang Yun-wu Ta Tz'u-tien) of 1928 was remarkable for its time, and although the pronunciations were very much in line with today's Standard Chinese, the lack of a phonetic index diminished its overall usefulness. The northern Mandarin pronunciations were given in the "Guoyu Luomazi
", devised by linguist Zhao Yuanren
, as well as in MPS characters with a dotted corner for tone. It also delineated parts of speech, and all compounds were listed by the four-corner method as well. It was extremely modern. It used some arcane styles of characters as a citation form, and had a few errors and some important omissions.
The famed lexicographer and author of Ci Yuan (T'zu Yuan), Lu Erkui (Lu Er-k'ui), as well as other lexicographers, became early proponents of the Four Corner Method. By 1931, it was used extensively by the Commercial Press to index virtually all classical reference works and collections of China, such as the Pei Wen Yun Fu and Si Ku Quan Shu
, as well as many modern ones.
Hospital, personnel and police records were organized just like the biographical indexes and dynastic histories of former times. For a while (Nash, Trindex, 1930), it seemed that the Kang Xi Bushou (K'ang-hsi Pu-shou) 214 Radical System
, left by the Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty, was being replaced by the Four Corner Method.
Internationally, Harvard and other universities were using the method for their book collections, and the KMT
Nanjing government (the main political and governmental body prior to 1949) seemed to have selected this numerical system as its standard. It was taught in primary schools to children in Shanghai
and other locations during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, up to the outbreak of general war with Japan
in 1937.
The Four Corner Method was extremely popular in government education circles to promote spoken language unification until pronunciation-based systems became fashionable in the mid 1930s.
The first large-scale project to promote spoken language unification was in 1936: Wang Li
's 4 volume Mandarin Phonetic System (MPS) entry, Guoyu Cidian (Kuo-yu Tz'u-tien). In 1949 it was re-edited into the MPS Hanyu Da Cidian
with Kang Xi
214 radical index, and a small Four Corner dictionary was available as the Xin Sijiaohaoma Cidian of 1953. After 1949, limited use of MPS and the original Four Corner Method continued under the People's Government, until the introduction of pinyin
in 1958 and after. Today's Chinese dictionaries still contain MPS characters below each Pinyin class entry and sometimes in a phonetics chart in tables (Xinhua Cidian), while main entries are all in Hanyu Pinyin order. There is one all-sijiaohaoma small dictionary (Third Revision, below).
and included the Four Corner index among several other lookup methods. Olshanin (USSR) included a Four Corner index in his Chinese-Russian dictionary and in new China, an extraordinary project of the 25 Histories (Ershi wu shi) was published in the early 1950s with a Four Corner index volume containing the entire content.
Then, in 1958, with the introduction of Pinyin
, a small "Xin Sijiaohaoma Cidian" was produced by the Beijing Commercial Press, but the rapid Han character simplification of the following years made the small (30,000 compound) book obsolete in China. Overseas and in Hong Kong, it remained popular for a number of years as a high speed key to phonetic dictionaries and indexes. It was used by those partly literate in Chinese or—in some areas—unfamiliar with Standard Chinese
, especially Hanyu Pinyin.
Wang Yunwu produced a "Xiao Cidian" and "Zonghe Cidian" in the late 1940s. In Taiwan, "Zonghe Cidian" remains in print with an auxiliary section of rare characters. The telecode number, radical and stroke counts are shown for each character in a convenient size, but a phonetic index is still lacking. Also, all is traditional Chinese and it contains a lot of obsolete information. Still, it is convenient for reading old Republic-period materials and literature, and as a handy finder for pronunciations.
, the Four Corner Method underwent a radical Third Revision during the compilation of the experimental volume of the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, Commercial Press, Beijing, 1972. Another medium sized dictionary, the Xinhua Zidian
, appeared with this index as well, but in the late 1990s the four corner index disappeared from newer editions. Both works now use only the Pinyin main entry and multi-door radical index systems that make it possible to look up a character with perhaps a wrong radical (i.e., characters appear redundantly under different radicals) and the number of strokes and variant forms are greatly reduced, and many more people are literate and capable of transcribing standard Chinese with Pinyin. The use of stroke counting and radicals puts memorization of the character ahead of sheer speed in handling it. This method is more supportive of mass literacy, a more important priority than classical scholarship or processing and filing names or characters for the majority in China today. The four-corner method is ultimately for readers, researchers, editors and fileclerks, not for writers who seek a character that they know in speech or recitation. In China today, a new version of the excellent small "Xin Sijiaohaoma Cidian", soft cover from Commercial Press, Beijing, has been available since the late 1970s, updated in several new editions and printings. It uses the Third Revision and enjoys some popularity.
large type edition is available with a four corner index for those whose failing eyesight precludes browsing and counting strokes.
In China today, many famous KMT
period reference books and collections with four corner indexes are being reprinted for sale to scholars and those interested in Old Chinese language or historical studies.
The four corner method is not in common usage in China today, including Taiwan, although dictionaries with it are available in many bookshops and libraries for those who need or desire to learn or use it. It is identified, in public opinion, with the time when many Chinese were illiterate and the language was not yet unified; more Chinese today use the dictionary to help them write, not read. But it is useful for scholars, clerks, editors, compilers, and especially for foreigners who read Chinese. In recent years it has achieved a new usage as a character input system for computers, generating very short lists to browse.
Chinese input methods for computers
Hundreds of Chinese input methods are available for entry of Chinese characters into computers, but most keyboard-based methods rely on either pinyin phonetic readings or root shapes in Chinese characters...
used for encoding
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s into either a computer or a manual typewriter, using four or five numerical digit
Numerical digit
A digit is a symbol used in combinations to represent numbers in positional numeral systems. The name "digit" comes from the fact that the 10 digits of the hands correspond to the 10 symbols of the common base 10 number system, i.e...
s per character
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....
. The Four Corner Method is also known as the Four Corner System.
The four digits encode the shapes found in the four corners of the symbol, top-left to bottom-right. Although this does not uniquely identify a Chinese character, it leaves only a very short list of possibilities. A fifth digit can be added to describe an extra part above the bottom-right if necessary.
Origin
The Four Corner Method was invented in the 1920s by Wang YunwuWang Yunwu
Wang Yun Wu was born 1888 in Shanghai and was a famous Chinese scholar of history and political science, he was also a politician and invented Shih Chiao Hao Ma, a method of Chinese lexicography also sometimes referred to as the Four Corner Method....
(王雲五), the editor in chief at Commercial Press Ltd., China. Its development was based mainly on contributions by the Russian scholar Otto Rosenberg
Otto Rosenberg
Otto Karl Julius Rosenberg was a Russian scholar who created a system of organizing Chinese characters in a dictionary format, which eventually resulted in the Four Corner Method....
in the early 20th century, as well as experiments by Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang was a Chinese writer and inventor. His informal but polished style in both Chinese and English made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, and his compilations and translations of classic Chinese texts into English were bestsellers in the West.-Youth:Lin was born in...
and others. Its original purpose was to aid telegraphers in looking up Chinese telegraph code
Chinese telegraph code
The Chinese Telegraph Code, Chinese Telegraphic Code, or Chinese Commercial Code is a four-digit decimal code for electrically telegraphing messages written with Chinese characters.- Encoding and decoding :...
(CST) numbers in use at that time from long lists of characters. This was mentioned by Wang Yunwu in an introductory pamphlet called Sijiaohaoma Jianzifa in 1926. Introductory essays for this pamphlet were written by Cai Yuanpei
Cai Yuanpei
Cai Yuanpei was a Chinese educator and the president of Peking University. He was known for his critical evaluation of the Chinese culture that led to the influential May Fourth Movement...
and Hu Shi.
How it works
The four digits used to encode each character are chosen according to the "shape" of the four corners of each character, i.e. the upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right corners. The shapes can be memorized using a Chinese poem that Hu Shi composed, called Bihuahaoma Ge, as a "memory key" to the system:| Traditional | Simplified | Pinyin | Meaning | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
一橫二垂三點捺， 點下帶橫變零頭， 叉四插五方塊六， 七角八八小是九。 |
一横二垂三点捺， 点下带横变零头， 叉四插五方块六， 七角八八小是九。 |
Yī héng, èr chuí, sān diǎn, nà; Diǎn xià dài héng, biàn líng tou; Cha si, cha wu, fang kuai liu; Qi jiao, ba ba, xiao shi jiu. |
1 for horizontal, 2 vertical, 3 is a dot; a dot under horizontal, or already another corner is 0; crossing is 4, crossing more than one is 5, a box is 6; 7 for a corner, 八 (shape of '8' character) is 8, and 小 is 9. |
In the 1950s, lexicographers in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
changed the poem somewhat in order to avoid association with Hu Shi, although the contents remain generally unchanged. For various reasons, his name was "unmentionable" at the time the new version was composed. The 1950s version is as follows:
| Traditional | Simplified | Pinyin | Meaning | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
横一垂二三點捺， 叉四插五方框六， 七角八八九是小， 點下有横變零頭。 |
横一垂二三点捺， 叉四插五方框六， 七角八八九是小， 点下有横变零头。 |
Heng yi, chui er, san dian, na; Cha si, cha wu, fang kuang liu; Qi jiao, ba ba, jiu shi xiao; Dian xia you heng, bian ling tou. |
horizontal is 1, vertical 2, 3 is a dot; crossing is 4, crossing more than one is 5, a box is 6; 7 for a corner, 8 for 八 (shape of '8' character), 9 is 小; and a dot under horizontal, or already another corner is 0. |
Several other notes:
- A single stroke can be represented in more than one corner, as is the case with many curly strokes. (e.g. the code for 乙 is 1771)
- If the character is fenced by 囗, 門(门), or 鬥, the lower corners are used to denote what is inside the radicalRadical (Chinese character)A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...
, instead of 00 for 囗 or 22 for the others. (e.g. the code for 回 is 6060)
There have been scores, maybe hundreds, of such numerical and alpha-numerical systems proposed or popularized (such as Lin Yutang's "Instant Index", Trindex, Head-tail, Wang An's Sanjiahaoma, Halpern); some Chinese refer to these generically as "sijiaohaoma" (after the original pamphlet) though this is not correct.
Versions
Over time, the Four Corner Method has gone through some changes. These changes were made ...First Version
The first (revised) version was published in Shanghai in 1928. It was quickly adopted and popularized as a method for (among other things):- Arranging and indexing Chinese characters in dictionaries
- Indexing Chinese classical and modern books, libraries, hospital and police records
- Chinese typewriters
- Military code making (for handling the characters quickly)
The Wang Yun-wu Da Cidian (Wang Yun-wu Ta Tz'u-tien) of 1928 was remarkable for its time, and although the pronunciations were very much in line with today's Standard Chinese, the lack of a phonetic index diminished its overall usefulness. The northern Mandarin pronunciations were given in the "Guoyu Luomazi
Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Gwoyeu Romatzyh , abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Y.R. Chao and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself later published influential works in linguistics using GR...
", devised by linguist Zhao Yuanren
Yuen Ren Chao
Chao Yuen Ren was a Chinese American linguist and amateur composer. He made important contributions to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar....
, as well as in MPS characters with a dotted corner for tone. It also delineated parts of speech, and all compounds were listed by the four-corner method as well. It was extremely modern. It used some arcane styles of characters as a citation form, and had a few errors and some important omissions.
The famed lexicographer and author of Ci Yuan (T'zu Yuan), Lu Erkui (Lu Er-k'ui), as well as other lexicographers, became early proponents of the Four Corner Method. By 1931, it was used extensively by the Commercial Press to index virtually all classical reference works and collections of China, such as the Pei Wen Yun Fu and Si Ku Quan Shu
Siku Quanshu
The Siku Quanshu, variously translated as the Imperial Collection of Four, Emperor's Four Treasuries, Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature, or Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, is the largest collection of books in Chinese history and probably the most ambitious editorial...
, as well as many modern ones.
Hospital, personnel and police records were organized just like the biographical indexes and dynastic histories of former times. For a while (Nash, Trindex, 1930), it seemed that the Kang Xi Bushou (K'ang-hsi Pu-shou) 214 Radical System
214 Radical System
The 214 Radical System is a system of writing Chinese characters, with 214 unique radicals, which contribute to the meaning of written Chinese.-Origin:This system was developed in the creation of a dictionary, the Zihui...
, left by the Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty, was being replaced by the Four Corner Method.
Internationally, Harvard and other universities were using the method for their book collections, and the KMT
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
Nanjing government (the main political and governmental body prior to 1949) seemed to have selected this numerical system as its standard. It was taught in primary schools to children in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
and other locations during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, up to the outbreak of general war with Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in 1937.
The Four Corner Method was extremely popular in government education circles to promote spoken language unification until pronunciation-based systems became fashionable in the mid 1930s.
The first large-scale project to promote spoken language unification was in 1936: Wang Li
Wang Li
Wang Li , or Wang Liaoyi , was a Chinese linguist.Born into a poor but educated family in Bobai , Yulin, Guangxi, he was largely self-taught before entering the Tsinghua University in 1927. There he was taught by Yuen Ren Chao and Liang Qichao, among others. Encouraged by Chao, he went to Paris to...
's 4 volume Mandarin Phonetic System (MPS) entry, Guoyu Cidian (Kuo-yu Tz'u-tien). In 1949 it was re-edited into the MPS Hanyu Da Cidian
Hanyu Da Cidian
The Hanyu Da Cidian is the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary. Lexicographically comparable to the OED, it has diachronic coverage of the Chinese language, and traces usage over three millennia from Chinese classic texts to modern slang...
with Kang Xi
Kangxi Emperor
The Kangxi Emperor ; Manchu: elhe taifin hūwangdi ; Mongolian: Энх-Амгалан хаан, 4 May 1654 –20 December 1722) was the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the first to be born on Chinese soil south of the Pass and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1661 to 1722.Kangxi's...
214 radical index, and a small Four Corner dictionary was available as the Xin Sijiaohaoma Cidian of 1953. After 1949, limited use of MPS and the original Four Corner Method continued under the People's Government, until the introduction of pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
in 1958 and after. Today's Chinese dictionaries still contain MPS characters below each Pinyin class entry and sometimes in a phonetics chart in tables (Xinhua Cidian), while main entries are all in Hanyu Pinyin order. There is one all-sijiaohaoma small dictionary (Third Revision, below).
Second Revision
A minor Second Revision was made during and just after World War II. This was used by most postwar lexicographers including Morohashi Testsuji, who created his 12-volume Sino-Japanese dictionary, the Dai Kan-Wa jitenDai Kan-Wa jiten
The is a Japanese dictionary of kanji compiled by Morohashi Tetsuji. Remarkable for its comprehensiveness and size, Morohashi's dictionary contains over 50,000 character entries and 530,000 compound words...
and included the Four Corner index among several other lookup methods. Olshanin (USSR) included a Four Corner index in his Chinese-Russian dictionary and in new China, an extraordinary project of the 25 Histories (Ershi wu shi) was published in the early 1950s with a Four Corner index volume containing the entire content.
Then, in 1958, with the introduction of Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
, a small "Xin Sijiaohaoma Cidian" was produced by the Beijing Commercial Press, but the rapid Han character simplification of the following years made the small (30,000 compound) book obsolete in China. Overseas and in Hong Kong, it remained popular for a number of years as a high speed key to phonetic dictionaries and indexes. It was used by those partly literate in Chinese or—in some areas—unfamiliar with Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, especially Hanyu Pinyin.
Wang Yunwu produced a "Xiao Cidian" and "Zonghe Cidian" in the late 1940s. In Taiwan, "Zonghe Cidian" remains in print with an auxiliary section of rare characters. The telecode number, radical and stroke counts are shown for each character in a convenient size, but a phonetic index is still lacking. Also, all is traditional Chinese and it contains a lot of obsolete information. Still, it is convenient for reading old Republic-period materials and literature, and as a handy finder for pronunciations.
Third Revision
During the Cultural RevolutionCultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
, the Four Corner Method underwent a radical Third Revision during the compilation of the experimental volume of the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, Commercial Press, Beijing, 1972. Another medium sized dictionary, the Xinhua Zidian
Xinhua Zidian
The Xinhua Zidian is a Chinese language dictionary published by the Commercial Press. It is the best-selling Chinese dictionary and the world's most popular reference work. This pocket-sized dictionary of Chinese characters uses Simplified Chinese characters and pinyin romanization...
, appeared with this index as well, but in the late 1990s the four corner index disappeared from newer editions. Both works now use only the Pinyin main entry and multi-door radical index systems that make it possible to look up a character with perhaps a wrong radical (i.e., characters appear redundantly under different radicals) and the number of strokes and variant forms are greatly reduced, and many more people are literate and capable of transcribing standard Chinese with Pinyin. The use of stroke counting and radicals puts memorization of the character ahead of sheer speed in handling it. This method is more supportive of mass literacy, a more important priority than classical scholarship or processing and filing names or characters for the majority in China today. The four-corner method is ultimately for readers, researchers, editors and fileclerks, not for writers who seek a character that they know in speech or recitation. In China today, a new version of the excellent small "Xin Sijiaohaoma Cidian", soft cover from Commercial Press, Beijing, has been available since the late 1970s, updated in several new editions and printings. It uses the Third Revision and enjoys some popularity.
Current usage
The main purpose of the original four-corner system today is in doing academic research or handling large numbers of characters, terms, index cards, or names. It is also used in computer entry, where a smaller list of items is created to browse from than with other systems. The Xinhua ZidianXinhua Zidian
The Xinhua Zidian is a Chinese language dictionary published by the Commercial Press. It is the best-selling Chinese dictionary and the world's most popular reference work. This pocket-sized dictionary of Chinese characters uses Simplified Chinese characters and pinyin romanization...
large type edition is available with a four corner index for those whose failing eyesight precludes browsing and counting strokes.
In China today, many famous KMT
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
period reference books and collections with four corner indexes are being reprinted for sale to scholars and those interested in Old Chinese language or historical studies.
Summary
The Four-Corner Method or system, in its three revisions, is the one that was most widespread and actually supported by the Chinese state for a while, and is found in numerous older reference works and some still in publication. The small Kangorin Sino-Japanese Dictionary by Yoneyama had a four-corner index when it was introduced in the 1980s, but it has been since deleted.The four corner method is not in common usage in China today, including Taiwan, although dictionaries with it are available in many bookshops and libraries for those who need or desire to learn or use it. It is identified, in public opinion, with the time when many Chinese were illiterate and the language was not yet unified; more Chinese today use the dictionary to help them write, not read. But it is useful for scholars, clerks, editors, compilers, and especially for foreigners who read Chinese. In recent years it has achieved a new usage as a character input system for computers, generating very short lists to browse.
Uses
- CKC Chinese Input SystemCKC Chinese Input SystemThe CKC Chinese Input System is a Chinese input method for computers that uses the four corner method to encode characters.The encoding uses a maximum of 4 digits to represent a Chinese character. All possible shapes of strokes that forms any given Chinese character are classified into 10 groups,...
, implementation of the four corner method - Chinese four corner index — Listing of many Chinese characters sorted by Four Corner Method number
Other structural encodings
- Chinese telegraph codeChinese telegraph codeThe Chinese Telegraph Code, Chinese Telegraphic Code, or Chinese Commercial Code is a four-digit decimal code for electrically telegraphing messages written with Chinese characters.- Encoding and decoding :...
, a 4-digit system - SKIP, a structural system for Japanese kanjiKanjiKanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
External links
- Four Corner System for Searching Character Indexes and Computer Input explained
- MDBG online Chinese-English dictionary, a dictionary with four corner code support
- An overview of the four corner coding system
- Information about Wang Yun-Wu
- VimIM 四角號碼中文輸入法
- Graphical four-corner lookup for WWWJDICWWWJDICWWWJDIC is an online Japanese dictionary based on the electronic dictionaries compiled and collected by Australian academic Jim Breen. The main Japanese–English dictionary files contain around 150,000 entries, and the ENAMDICT dictionary contains over 720,000 Japanese names...
.