The is the oldest extant Japanese dictionary of Chinese characters. The title is also written 篆隷万象名義 with the modern graphic variant ban (万 "10,000; myriad") for ban (萬 "10,000; myriad").

The prominent Heian Period

Heian period

The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

 monk and scholar Kūkai

Kukai

Kūkai , also known posthumously as , 774–835, was a Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Shingon followers usually refer to him by the honorific titles of and ....

, founder of the Shingon Buddhism, edited his Tenrei banshō meigi around 830-835 CE, and based it upon the (circa 543 CE) Chinese Yupian

Yupian

The Yupian is a circa 543 CE Chinese dictionary edited by Gu Yewang during the Liang Dynasty. It arranges 12,158 character entries under 542 radicals, which differ somewhat from the original 540 in the Shuowen Jiezi...

dictionary. Among the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

 Chinese books that Kūkai brought back to Japan in 806 CE was an original edition Yupian and a copy of the (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi

Shuowen Jiezi

The Shuōwén Jiězì was an early 2nd century CE Chinese dictionary from the Han Dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary , it was still the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them , as well as the first to use the...

. One of the National Treasures of Japan

National treasures of Japan

National Treasures are the most precious of Japan's Tangible Cultural Properties, as determined and designated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs...

 held at the Kōzan-ji

Kozan-ji

, or , is an Omuro Buddhist temple located in Ume-ga-hata Toganoo-chō, Ukyō Ward, Kyoto, Japan. The temple was founded by famous monk Myōe and is renowned for its numerous national treasures and important cultural properties, in particular the famous picture scroll called Chōjū-giga. The temple...

 temple is an 1114 copy of the Tenrei banshō meigi.

The Chinese Yupian dictionary defines 12,158 characters under a system of 542 radicals

Radical (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...

 (bùshǒu 部首), which slightly modified the original 540 in the Shuowen jiezi. The Japanese Tenrei banshō meigi defines approximately 1,000 kanji

Kanji

Kanji 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...

(Chinese characters), under 534 radicals (bu 部), with a total of over 16,000 characters. Each entry gives the Chinese character in ancient seal script, Chinese pronunciation in fanqie

Fanqiè

In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:...

, and definition, all copied from the Yupian. The American Japanologist Don Bailey writes:

At the time of its compilation, calligraphic style and the Chinese readings and meanings of the characters were probably about all that was demanded of a dictionary, so that the Tenrei banshō meigi suited the scholarly needs of the times. It was compiled in Japan by a Japanese but is in no sense a Japanese dictionary, for it contains not one Wakun (Japanese reading). (1960:3)

In modern terms, this dictionary gives borrowed on'yomi "Sino-Japanese readings" but not native kun'yomi "Japanese readings". A later Heian dictionary, the (898-901 CE) Shinsen Jikyō

Shinsen Jikyo

The is the first Japanese dictionary containing native kun'yomi "Japanese readings" of Chinese characters. The title is also written 新選字鏡 with the graphic variant sen for sen ....

was the first to include Japanese readings.

Ikeda Shoju has studied the conversion of JIS encoding

JIS encoding

In computing, JIS encoding refers to several Japanese Industrial Standards for encoding the Japanese language. Strictly speaking, the term means either:* A set of standard character sets for Japanese, notably:...

 to Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

in order to create an online Tenrei banshō meigi.

External links

• A Database for Tenrei-Bansho-Meigi 篆隷万象名義データベース, Ikeda Shoju 池田証寿 (in Japanese)