Daijisen

The "Great fountain of knowledge (wisdom)/source of words" (大辞泉) is a general-purpose Japanese dictionary published by Shogakukan in 1995 and 1998. It was designed as an "all-in-one" dictionary for native speakers of Japanese, especially high school and university students.

History
Shogakukan intended for the to directly compete with Iwanami's popular  desktop dictionary, which was a bestseller through three editions (1955, 1969 and 1983). The followed upon the success of two other  competitors, Sanseido's  ("Great forest of words", 1988, 1995, 2006) and Kōdansha's color-illustrated  ("Great dictionary of Japanese", 1989, 1995). All of these dictionaries weigh around 1 kg and have about 3000 pages.

The 1st edition of the (1995) included over 220,000 entries and 6000 all-color illustrations and photographs. The chief editor Akira Matsumura (松村明) was also chief editor of the directly competing dictionary. Other editors included Akihiko Ikegami (池上秋彦), Hiroshi Kaneda (金田弘), and Kazuo Sugizaki (杉崎一雄). Shogakukan also released a CD-ROM version (1997) of the 1st edition.

The "enlarged and revised" edition (1998) was more of a revision than an enlargement, with 2978 pages versus 2938 in the 1st edition. Both editions claim "over 220,000 headwords".

Characteristics
The and  have much more in common than Matsumura's lexicographical supervision and similar ("Great fountain/forest of words") titles. These two dictionaries share many features of design and content. Both arrange word meanings with the most frequent ones first (like the American Heritage Dictionary), in contrast to the tradition of arranging with the oldest recorded meanings first (like the Oxford English Dictionary). This can be seen in their two respective definitions of the word "plagiarize" (剽窃):


 * "To take another person's works, theory, etc. and publish it as one's own." (他人の作品・学説などを自分のものとして発表すること.)
 * "To steal another person's works or writing and publish it as one's own." (他人の作品や論文を盗んで、自分のものとして発表すること.)

Some similarities between these dictionaries are obvious: Matsumura's 2nd edition (1995) added some full-color illustrations, including a chart of 168 color names (色の名) and his  (1995) included a color chart of 358 (カラーチャート色名).

The is not wholly derivative of the  and has some notable differences. improvements include visually appealing designs, more contemporary usage examples, and some helpful layout features. For instance, special columns indicate usage notes for topics including synonyms, suffixes, and even uncommon kanji pronunciations ("special readings for names" (名のり) and "difficult to read" (難読).

Print editions

 * 1st edition (ISBN 9784095012117) (1995-12-01)
 * Revised edition (ISBN 9784095012124) (1998-?-?)
 * 2nd edition (大辞泉【第二版】) (ISBN 9784095012131) (2012-11-02): Includes 250,000 entries, Windows DVD-ROM. 2 volumes.

Online search engines
The contents of the have been used in other dictionary sites, including:
 * Yahoo! (Yahoo!辞書)
 * goo (goo辞書)
 * kotobank (デジタル大辞泉)

The database versions are marked for April, August, December of every year, with updates delivered approximately every 4 months.

Electronic versions

 * DVD edition: Included with the second edition of the printed book.
 * Ver.1.00 (2012-11-02)
 * Ver.2.00 (2013-10-03)
 * Ver.3.00 (2014-10-08)
 * Ver.4.00 (2015-11-26)
 * Downloadable versions: Available for au Smart Pass, Android, iOS, Windows. The database versions and update schedules are same as the search engine versions.

Reviews
The Japanese lexicographer Tom Gally analyzed the :

"This dictionary seems in many ways a clone of . Not only is the same Tokyo University professor listed as editor – though it is important to note that the names appearing on the covers of Japanese dictionaries often have little relation to the people who actually did the work; one case in point being, even the most recent editions of which list as editor one 新村出 Shinmura Izuru, who has been dead since 1967 – but the definitions in follow closely those of as well. It also follows 's practice of putting the contemporary meanings first in its definitions. The two chief differences I've noticed are that  has color pictures while  uses line drawings – a rather obvious difference – and that the example sentences and phrases in  are more often typical of the contemporary language rather than citations from classical literature. This latter point makes  my first choice when I am writing Japanese and I want to check how words are used in context."

The bibliographer and cataloguer Yasuko Makino also described the :

"Over 220,000 words including archaic words, technical terms, geographical and personal names, and other proper names as well although focus is on modern words, are in this easy-to-use dictionary. Numerous examples of usage, explanation of delicate difference in the usage of each words, abundant inclusion of synonyms, and 6,000 all-color illustrations are a few of its strengths. One of the unique features of this dictionary is a listing of last elements, which functions as reverse-order dictionary. Includes detailed color charts. This works as [Japanese–Japanese dictionary], [Chinese–Japanese kanji dictionary],  [Classical Japanese dictionary],  [ loanword dictionary], and encyclopedia."

This depiction echoes Shogakukan's blurb that the is an "all-in-one, multi-functional dictionary" (オールインワン多機能辞典).

Marketing
A commercial (あなたの言葉を辞書に載せよう.) was listed as an ACC finalist in 2014 54th ACC CM Festival under the interactive division.

Online dictionaries

 * goo Gokugojisho
 * Kotobank digital
 * JapanKnowledge digital Japanese, English
 * Yahoo!辞書, Yahoo Japan's free dictionary server searches and

Dictionary software

 * Digital Android, au Smart Pass, iOS, Windows