480531170

Note: for compiling the present book, two editions of Kangxi zidian were referred
to: one was the edition published in 2009 by Wanjuan Publishing Co.; the other
one—used to ascertain actual character shapes promoted in Kangxi zidian entries—
was the electronic version produced by Personal Media Co. (Tokyo, ca.2001). The
latter text is a scanned version of the Peking Palace printed edition of 1827. Pagination
for the latter version is given by reference not to the traditional page numbers
for individual volumes of the dictionary, but as a continuum running from 1–3671.
6 Printed Texts and the Calligraphic Tradition
The term ‘traditional form’ will be seen in many entries in this book; it is used to
refer in principle to printed forms based on character shapes in Kangxi zidian, which
served as an authoritative standard in mainland China and Japan until around the
middle of the 20th century. These forms were favored by scholars because they tended
to retain elements of the small seal character shapes in the very highly regarded
Shuowen jiezi. The forms in Kangxi zidian and later mechanically produced texts
sometimes differ somewhat from the corresponding shapes favored in the calligraphic
tradition, i.e., in texts that served as calligraphic models for many hundreds
of years and indeed even down to the present. To illustrate this, let us consider
and : is the traditional Kangxi zidian form, reflecting the fact that corresponds
closely to the small seal form, while was favored in the calligraphic tradition.
Another example is provided by and , where is the traditional Kangxi
zidian form, reflecting the form of this character as it appears in Shuowen jiezi, but
is predominant in the calligraphic tradition.
In cases where the traditional form is noted at the beginning of an entry in this
book, this is because it differs from the corresponding form in standard modern
Japanese usage. For example, in the case of ‘disorder’ (entry 999), is noted
as the traditional form, and for ‘old, past’ (entry 677), is noted as the traditional
form. Not infrequently there is some variation (typically very minor) in the
traditional form for a given character; this is a point about which readers should
not be unduly concerned. In most cases in the entries in this book we give just one
traditional form. In modern Japanese usage, various relatively minor earlier differences
between the printed and handwritten shapes for a given character have been
eliminated, leaving only a small number of instances such as (printed and handwritten
forms differ modestly) and (again, printed and handwritten forms differ
in a minor way).
Note: originally in China and Japan, printing of texts was done using the woodblock
printing technique, whereby large blocks of a hard wood were engraved with
Introduction 19