OSAKA — A rare first-edition copy of the first Japanese-English dictionary published in Japan has been on public display at the Mint Museum in Osaka since April.
The first-edition "Japanese and English Dictionary — With an English and Japanese Index," which was found at the Mint Bureau, was published in the late Edo Period.
It was edited by James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911), an American known for inventing the Hepburn system to use the Roman alphabet to represent Japanese characters.
About 1,500 copies of the dictionary, which contains 20,000 entries, were printed in Shanghai and published in Yokohama.
Another copy of the first edition is reportedly kept at Tokyo's Waseda University.
While some Japanese-English dictionaries had earlier been published overseas, the dictionary is said to be the first one published in Japan.
According to Yoshiro Kojima, professor emeritus at Waseda University, the dictionary was the first Japanese-English dictionary published for everyday use.
"It was probably used by one of the foreign officials hired by the Japanese government at the beginning of the Meiji Era," he said.
According to the Mint Bureau, the dictionary was found stored at the museum, which is on the same property. The copy was badly damaged and had been under repair since last year.
The dictionary bears a signature inside its front cover believed to be that of Thomas William Kinder, the British director of the bureau at the time it was established.
The Mint Bureau was founded in 1871, and about 31 foreign staffers have worked there as technical advisers.