AeDictionary War' in the Middle of the Meiji Period<BR><BR>

@@This paper is an attempt to examine aedictionary war' between two English-Japanese dictionaries from a bibliographical point of view. They were compiled heavily dependent on Webster's dictionary and first published in the same year of 1888. One was compiled by Yutaka Shimada and published by Okura, while the other was compiled by F. Warrington Eastlake and Ichiro Tanahashi and published by Sanseido. They had many lexicographical characteristics in common. They were revised and enlarged several times in order to gain a decisive victory in the war which raged about twenty years in the Meiji period.
@@The examination of their editions and contents reveals that they were not competing in terms of precise description of lexical items but in terms of size, total number of entry words, and repeated additions of supplements or appendixes to their main body, which cannot be regarded as substantial from a lexicographical viewpoint but very important from a historical viewpoint for a deeper understanding of the development of English-Japanese lexicography.