Webster's Dictionaries in the Cabinet Library<BR><BR>

�@�@The Library, which was founded in Tokyo in 1884 as the central government library, has kept as many as one hundred Webster's dictionaries which are supposed to have been imported before and after the Meiji Restoration and belonged to the government agencies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture. The close examination of these works would suggest to us how they were accepted and consulted in the Meiji Era. The library has about fifty unabridged Webster's English dictionaries, and eleven abridged dictionaries, which were usually called �gRoyal Octavo" in Japan. In addition, it keeps some ten small-sized dictionaries 
and fifteen Webster's dictionaries, large or small, published in London.