Review of Oreste Vaccari’s Pictorial Chinese-Japanese Characters (漢字の母體)

Abstract

This review examines the organization and content of Pictorial Chinese-Japanese Characters (1964), a textbook for learning Chinese characters written by Oreste Vaccari (1886–1980), and examines its features and limitations. Pictorial Chinese-Japanese Characters (漢字の母體) is a textbook for westerners who are new to Chinese characters, and seems to have been written with this in mind judging from the level of Chinese characters included and the editorial organization. This book has the advantage of teaching Chinese characters in a systematic way, explaining how they are organized. However, if we look at the details, we find that the explanations of the interpretation of the characters are sometimes incorrect, and there are also errors such as overinterpreting the meaning of the sound part of the phonetic characters (形聲字). This review will examine the organization and content of this book and identify its strengths and limitations.