Hi everyone,

I am working on a book on reading advanced Japanese, and I would like to include partial definitions of vocabulary in Japanese, culled from a Jp-Jp dictionary such as Daijirin. While I think it would probably be fair use if properly cited, I would prefer to avoid the copyright issue entirely by using a public domain dictionary. Does any exist?

English definitions won't be a problem because of Jim Breen's EDICT, and example sentences won't be a problem because of Tatoeba.org / the Tanaka Corpus. But I'm stumped about how to procure Jp-Jp definitions without relying on fair use or seeking permission from a publisher. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you!

There's wiktionary, perhaps? Of course there are public domain J-J dictionaries that are out of copyright, but those will be harder for you to access.

Great idea, thanks. Please let me know if you are aware of any older public-domain dictionaries online of the sort you mention. But Wiktionary will be a great start.

日本語 WordNet, maybe?
http://nlpwww.nict.go.jp/wn-ja/

It's not nearly as good as a commercial dictionary, but it's decent, and I think it might have more words than Wiktionary, not sure about that though.

Is anyone aware of any similar E-J sources? I'm thinking of making a basic Rikai-chan-style feature for a webapp aimed at Japanese learners, but EDICT is only reliable for J-E. Is there a list of these kinds of resources anywhere?