Daijisen
The  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  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  was also chief editor of the directly-competing  dictionary. Other  editors included , , and . 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 :

: 
: 

Some similarities between these dictionaries are obvious: Matsumura's 2nd edition  (1995) added some full-color illustrations, including a chart of 168 color names () and his  (1995) included a color chart of 358 (). 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 ( and . Publications

Print editions
1st edition () (1995-12-01)
Revised edition () (1998-?-?) 2nd edition () () (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!) goo  (goo)
kotobank ()

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  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" (). Marketing
A  commercial () was listed as an ACC finalist in 2014 54th ACC CM Festival under the interactive division. References

Bibliography

, review article

External links
 portal 
: Japanese Dictionary (Enlarged and revised edition) Shogakukan's  English homepage
Shogakukan page:  2nd edition

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

Dictionary software
Digital  Android, au Smart Pass, iOS, Windows 

1990s books
Japanese dictionaries
Lexicography