Ōtsuki Fumihiko

Bust of Ōtsuki Fumihiko in Sendai Dai-Ichi Elementary School, Miyagi Prefecture

Ōtsuki Fumihiko ( Japanese 大 槻 文彦 , Ōtsuki Fumihiko ; born October 15, 1847 in Edo ; † February 17, 1928 ) was a Japanese lexicographer , linguist and historian . He became known through the dictionaries of Japanese he edited , the Genkai ( 言 海 , literally: "Sea of ​​Words"; 1891) and his successor Daigenkai ( 大 言 海 , literally: "Great Sea of ​​Words"; 1932–37) , as well as studying Japanese grammar .

Ōtsuki grew up in the Edo district of Kobiki-chō ( 木 挽 町 ), now part of the Tokyo Ginza . He was the third son of the Confucian scholar and expert in gunnery Ōtsuki Bankei ( 大 槻 磐 渓 ) and grandson of the Confucian and Rangaku scholar Ōtsuki Gentaku ( 大 槻 玄 沢 ). Following the family tradition, he began with " western studies ": at the Kaiseijo School (a predecessor of the University of Tokyo ) he studied English and mathematics . He later worked as a translator while learning English from Americans in the port city of Yokohama . From 1872 he participated in the publication of an English-Japanese dictionary, later he worked on textbooks and gave lessons in schools in Miyagi Prefecture .

Although Ōtsuki paid for the printing costs of the first edition of the Genkai himself, it was soon reprinted and expanded into commercial editions with print runs of over 1,000 copies. Partly based on the model of Western monolingual dictionaries, Genkai not only gave information about the words, their representation in Kanji , Katakana and Hiragana , as well as their definitions in Japanese - but also their pronunciation , etymology and quotations of their use. The successor, the four-volume Daigenkai , although published under Ōtsuki's name and based in part on his work, appeared a few years after his death. It was accomplished by other lexicographers.

Ōtsuki's grammar books, especially “An Extensive Grammar of Japanese” ( 広 日本 文 典 , Kō Nihon Bunten ) and “Grammar of Japanese Colloquial Language” ( 口語 法 , Kōgohō ), influenced the school teaching of Japanese grammar for future generations.

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• Grant Goodman: Japan and the Dutch 1600-1853 . Routledge Curzon, Richmond, NY 2000. ISBN 0-7007-1220-8 .
• Donald Keene : Dawn to the West (A history of Japanese literature; 3). 2nd Rev. Ed. Columbia University Press, New York 1998. ISBN 0-231-11435-4 .
• Ernst F. Koerner: Concise History of the Language Sciences . Pergamon Books, Kidlington 1995. ISBN 0-08-042580-1 .