Review of Fukutake kanwa jiten by Dylan W.H. Sung

Came with a box cover and a transparent dust jacket.

An 8000 character dictionary with 50,000 compound entries listed in 1224 pages not including indexes and appendices. Ordered under radicals and then by number of strokes. Gives a total stroke number index, and also an On-Kun readings index.

Illustrated with diagrams, it has short topics with subjects from Chinese historical personages and provides examples of about 80 popular Chinese poems and gives a Japanese translation and discussion for each. The appendices contain a summary of Chinese history, alongside Japanese and world events, weights and measures through the ages, the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching (Yi Jing), maps of China at intervals in its history, old and standard Japanese kanji table, traditional and modern mainland Chinese standard Hanzi table, an index of poems exampled in the dictionary, names and titles concerned with Chinese literature, list of set character sayings that appear throughout the dictionary, and an essay on the origins and development of Chinese and Chinese poetry which also serves an intro to Chinese linguistics due the importance of tones and poetical prosody. All character entries are given a rhyme which in turn gives the character a reference for the Chinese tone from the 106 rhyme ShiYun tradition.

Extra Kanji information (such as 'ideogram' and/or 'sound compound') are given, in some cases it includes a tortoise-shell type script.

The bias of this work is towards readers who have an interest in Chinese poetry. Highly recommended as a do-it-yourself primer to reading Chinese from a Japanese perspective, with the use of markers for the Japanese reading order in a line of Chinese verse.

☆ See all reviews by Dylan W.H. Sung.