How was the first Japanese-English dictionary made?


How was the first Japanese-English dictionary made? In other words, how could
the author map correctly each Japanese word to its corresponding one in
English?




To the best of my knowledge, and the knowledge of the dictionary's creator,
the first Japanese-English dictionary is the one published by by James Curtis
Hepburn in 1867. Hepburn was a physician and Protestant missionary in Japan,
and you may recognize his name from Hepburn Romanization.

In the preface to the dictionary, Hepburn notes that he is responsible for
most of the contents. That is, he learned the language and then compiled what
he had learned into a dictionary. To quote Hepburn himself:

> [The words] here published have been collected, for the most part, in the
> course of [the author's] own reading, or heard in use among the people

Hepburn also cites the Portuguese-Japanese dictionaries published by the
Jesuits in 1603 and a "small vocabulary" by a contemporary Dr. Medhurst (from
what I can tell, [Walter Henry
Medhurst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Henry_Medhurst), known for his
work on Chinese-English Dictionaries), but ultimately claims responsibility
for the bulk of the dictionary.

A scan of the dictionary, including the preface that I cite above can be found
[here](https://books.google.com/books?id=4h0TAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false).

Biographical information came from the [wikipedia
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Curtis_Hepburn) about Hepburn




To the best of my knowledge, and the knowledge of the dictionary's creator,
the first Japanese-English dictionary is the one published by by James Curtis
Hepburn in 1867. Hepburn was a physician and Protestant missionary in Japan,
and you may recognize his name from Hepburn Romanization.

In the preface to the dictionary, Hepburn notes that he is responsible for
most of the contents. That is, he learned the language and then compiled what
he had learned into a dictionary. To quote Hepburn himself:

> [The words] here published have been collected, for the most part, in the
> course of [the author's] own reading, or heard in use among the people

Hepburn also cites the Portuguese-Japanese dictionaries published by the
Jesuits in 1603 and a "small vocabulary" by a contemporary Dr. Medhurst (from
what I can tell, [Walter Henry
Medhurst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Henry_Medhurst), known for his
work on Chinese-English Dictionaries), but ultimately claims responsibility
for the bulk of the dictionary.

A scan of the dictionary, including the preface that I cite above can be found
[here](https://books.google.com/books?id=4h0TAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false).

Biographical information came from the [wikipedia
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Curtis_Hepburn) about Hepburn

