The latest instance of textbook controversy has reminded me of the changing descriptions in the entry on Korea in different editions of a well-known Japanese-language dictionary. Reports have it that the South Korean government was so upset by a certain textbook that its protests brought on a diplomatic crisis.

The dictionary is the "Kojien," by Iwanami Shoten. It was initially compiled in 1935 by the lexicographer Izuru Shinmura, but the first edition of the dictionary as we know it today did not appear until 1955. Containing 200,000 words, the "Kojien" apparently became the model for all other lexicons of similar nature, and its publisher has since produced a new edition every 11 years on average. The latest, published in 1998, is the fifth.

I first noticed the changing descriptions in entries, as well as the deletion and addition of entries, in the "Kojien" after the first edition I owned fell apart and I acquired the second edition, published in 1969. While checking on some birds, I was startled to see an about-face kind of change in the entry on "tsugumi" (thrush). The first edition pointed to the thrush's importance as a game bird, adding that its "meat is delicious." The second edition made no culinary reference, saying instead, "In the past it used to be captured in great numbers with bird-nets as a food source." Evidently Japan's great age of pollution, during the 1950s and 1960s, had taken its toll.