Where can you buy the 大漢和辞典 (Daikanwajiten) ? (online or physical copy)

2 comments

1. There are some used copies on amazon jp, as well as the digital version, but you do know this is a encyclopedic work that’s 15 volumes right?

   Cheapest used copy I see is 80,000円.

   If you are at an educational institution japanknowledge.com offers a subscription tier that includes online access to it. Unfortunately the individual subscription does not include it.

   Otherwise, there’s a poor quality mdict scan floating around on the web

   I should also say this dictionary is much more relevant to Literary Chinese than Japanese per se

   Unless there’s a specific reason you need to access this particular dictionary, 漢辞海 is a much more user friendly dictionary for 漢文 for most needs

2. I ordered a copy from http://www.kosho.or.jp about 10 years ago, that’s probably your best bet for where to get it — it won’t be cheap, though. It’s not a resource that you want to buy for yourself if you don’t have a specific need for it.

   And as the other person said, this dictionary is very large and even if you are reading literary Chinese, a smaller dictionary is going to be OK for most uses. I actually don’t use the Morohashi very often at all since the 漢語林 I have on my electronic dictionary has most of the kanji that occur even in literary Chinese texts.

   EDIT: http://www.kosho.or.jp does have some individual volumes in the “small” printed version for around 1000 yen so that could work if, judging from your other posts, you’re just looking for something to browse through for fun.