Keiu Nakamura's Search for English Dictionaries

Abstract

In the early days of his English study, Keiu Nakamura, in need of a dictionary, made for himself an extract of Morrison's English-Chinese Dictionary, then procured the English-Japanese dictionary published by the Government. Neither seems to have satisfied his need, and he again copied the whole of the English-Chinese dictionary which he borrowed from Yasuyoshi Katsu. The dictionary is identified in the present paper as Medhurst's English and Chinese Dictionary.However, Lobscheid's English and Chinese Dictionary which was published later must have proved more useful at the time of his translating such books as On Liberty by Mill, with richer contents and distinctive similarities with the Medhurst Dictionary in the style of compilation.While searching for good dictionaries, Keiu was engaged in compiling one himself. A confucianist and a student of English, he was in the right position to supervise the compilation of a new English-Chinese-Japanese Dictionary which was a translation version of the Lobscheid Dictionary.With this, his search came to a conclusion. Such English-Chinese dictionaries as well as English-Chinese-Japanese dictionaries, however, were monuments of a trasitional period, and were to be replaced by English-Japanese dictionaries.