The joy and difficulty of “dictionary editing” as seen in “Weaving a Boat”

＜prologue＞

I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.

So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.

It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.

It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.

If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.

I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.

my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています

my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49) on X

<Added 2024/2/17> The 10-episode drama “Weaving a Boat” will begin airing on NHK on February 18th.

[Synopsis] Kishibe Midori is an editorial staff member at a hugely popular fashion magazine. When the magazine is to be discontinued, she is suddenly transferred to the dictionary editorial department! Her new job is full of quirky characters, led by her unkempt, overly serious boss, Majime Mitsuya.

Even though she’s at the mercy of these people, Midori is inspired by the patience and enthusiasm with which they put in over a decade of time and effort to create a single dictionary. She gradually discovers the charm of words herself and becomes absorbed in the work of dictionary compilation. This is the story of the dictionary editorial staff’s struggle to complete the dictionary “Odo Kai.”

[Broadcast Schedule] Starts Sunday, February 18, 2024 (10 episodes total) Every Sunday from 10:00 PM to 10:49 PM (NHK BS Premium 4K/NHK BS)

[Original Story] Shion Miura’s “The Great Passage”

[Screenplay] Naomi Hiruta (all episodes), Yume Shiozuka (co-writer of Episode 5)

[Music] Face 2 FAKE

[Director] Renpei Tsukamoto, Manabu Aso, Daisuke Ajiki

[Starring] Elaiza Ikeda, Yojiro Noda, and others

[Production Supervisor] Aki Taka (AX-ON), Kei Kunpei (NHK) [Producer] Mayumi Okatake (Avan’s Gate), Nishikishu (AX-ON)

I previously wrote an article introducing ways to enjoy reading a Japanese dictionary, but there’s an interesting novel called “Weaving the Boat” by Shion Miura. It won the 2012 Bookstore Award. It was also made into a movie starring Matsuda Ryuhei, so some of you may have seen it. It’s also been made into an anime.

The story is about a dictionary editor, and follows Majime Mitsuya, an eccentric editorial staff member at Genbu Publishing, who is welcomed into the dictionary editorial department as part of the compilation of a newly published dictionary, “Odo Kai,” and becomes immersed in the world of dictionaries alongside the eccentric editors.

The name “Odo Kai” is apparently derived from the idea that a dictionary is a boat that crosses the ocean of words, and editors weave the boat that crosses that ocean.

The protagonist, Majime Mitsuya, is said to be modeled after Kurashima Setsunao, who joined Sanseido in 1959 and spent 25 years completing the Daijirin dictionary at the resurgent Sanseido after the company’s bankruptcy in the 1970s.

However, I can’t help but feel that he is modeled after the editors of the Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten.

The reason is that the definition of “koi” (love), which Majime was tasked with defining, is “a state of mind in which you fall in love with someone, and you can’t get that person out of your head, awake or asleep, so you can’t do anything else and feel like writhing in agony. /If this love is fulfilled, you feel like you’re in heaven,” which is very similar to the definition of “ren ai” (love) in the Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten. Since both the Daijirin and the Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten are Sanseido dictionaries, it’s possible that Kurashima Setsunao was also involved in editing the Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten.

On a different note, I once came across this explanation in a dictionary. There are two words, “A” and “B,” and “A” and “B” have the same meaning. However, when I look at the entry for “A,” it says “same as B,” and when I look at the entry for “B,” it says “same as A.” This is a circular argument; all I get is that “A” and “B” have the same meaning, but I don’t understand the actual meaning of the words themselves.

I’ve forgotten the details, but I think both “A” and “B” were simple words that didn’t need any explanation, but as a dictionary it fails. Many people are involved in editing a dictionary, and the vast number of words they need to divide up to create definitions is a problem, so I can surmise that the problem was a lack of communication and coordination between the editors responsible for “A” and “B” (it was unclear which editor was responsible for writing the specific definitions).

It was probably overlooked during the final proofreading process. It’s like the mutual compromise between baseball players, or matchmaking in volleyball. On the other hand, if the people in charge of “A” and “B” each write different definitions, it would also be a problem if readers felt that something was inconsistent or got confused…