The ''Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan'' is a comprehensive

English-language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article (publishing), articles or entries that are arranged Alp ...

first published in 1983 that covers a broad range of topics on

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

History

First published by

Kodansha is a Japanese privately held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha publishes manga magazines which include ''Nakayoshi'', ''Morning (magazine), Morning'', ''Afternoon (magazine), Afternoon'', ''Evening (magazine), Eveni ...

in 1983 followed by a supplemental volume in 1986. A two-volume updated edition, and a one-volume abridged (and updated) edition were published in 1993. The latter was the basis of the online version, which as of June 2010, is no longer available as a free-standing site. It can still be accessed through the JapanKnowledge database.

Content

The encyclopedia was created by both Japanese (680) and non-Japanese scholars (524) from 27 nations. Some of the advisors to the ''Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan'' included

Edwin O. Reischauer Edwin Oldfather Reischauer ( ; October 15, 1910 – September 1, 1990) was an American diplomat, educator, and professor at Harvard University. Born in Tokyo to American educational missionaries, he became a leading scholar of the history and cu ...

, Gerald L. Curtis, Ronald P. Dore, John W. Hall, Ezra Vogel, Akira Iriye, and Tsuru Shigeto. Japanese scholars produced 40 percent of the text, while foreign scholars wrote the remaining 60 percent. Japanese and American scholars wrote the majority of the articles. Many articles are English translations from Japanese encyclopedias. There are more than 11,000 entries covering 37 categories of information. These include encyclopedia standards such as history, literature, art, religion, economy, and geography. In addition, science, technology, law, women, folklore, plant and animal life, food, clothing, sports, and leisure are given separate categories. It also contains roughly 1000 illustrations in the form of photographs, maps, diagrams, graphs, charts and tables. The ninth index volume contains names and words mentioned within the encyclopedia, but not assigned separate entries. To accommodate a wide audience, from students to businessmen and diplomats, articles were written with the dual purpose of introducing topics at a level appropriate for a high-school student and provide a good starting point for more advanced students with some knowledge of Japan. Numerous articles are no more than a paragraph. However, more general headings such as "

History of Japan The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to the Japanese Paleolithic, Paleolithic, around 38–39,000 years ago. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the fi ...

" have as many as 70,000 words. Many are signed, especially the longer ones. A lot of articles are followed by suggestions for further readings in English, Japanese, and occasionally other languages. Japanese names are given in Japanese order (family names first).

Citations

General references

External links

JapanKnowledge database
{{Authority control 1983 non-fiction books 20th-century encyclopedias English-language encyclopedias Japanese online encyclopedias Japanese encyclopedias Kodansha

History

Content

See also

Citations

General references

External links