Kanji help request – Fujishiro – Nihon toko jiten – Koto hen

[Wim V]

I recently added the Koto edition of Fujishiro’s Nihon toko jiten to my collection of nihonto books. I bought this book brand new from a Japanese dealer and there was no english index included. Therefore I decided to make an index myself. This may seem a bit crazy to some people but I felt this would be an excellent exercise for my kanji reading skills. At this moment my index is almost finished and I feel the experience has indeed been quite educational.

 

There are however a few smith names with which I keep having difficulties in finding the correct reading, and for these I would like to ask some help. These are the ones that keep me from my sleep (and from finalizing my index) :

 

1) Page 99: 兼宿: According to the Nihonto knowledge base this is read as “Kaneieâ€. However this brings me the following problem. Throughout the book I have noticed that the smith names are always listed in a logical order according to their reading. As there are already two “Kaneie†listed on page 74 (兼家 and 兼舎), the one discussed here does not seem to fit on page 99, unless it has a different reading. It’s very interesting furthermore that on page 74, in the paragraph where Kaneie (兼舎) is discussed, the name causing me problems (兼宿) already appears. After this name Fujishiro puts “yado†in katakana between brackets (ヤド), so I wonder if 兼宿 could maybe be read as “Kaneyado†?? In that case the name would seem to be in place on page 99 where it is listed between Kanekuni (兼國) and Kaneyasu (兼安).

 

2) Page 187: 大知: This one is mentioned in the Nihonto knowledge base as “Daichiâ€, but also as “Daitomoâ€. So I wonder which one is right, or are they both possible ?

 

3) Page 405: 増盛: “Masumori†?

 

4) Page 466: 義憲: An obvious reading for this name could be “Yoshinoriâ€, but as it follows a series of names all starting with “kiâ€, and as all the other names where 義 is read as “yoshi†are listed on pages 174 - 179, I suppose in this case the kanji 義 should be read as “gi†(like in Chogi). However this leaves me with a question mark to the full name 義憲: Ginori? or Gikazu? or ...? According to the book this is a Ko-bizen smith, but seemingly not a very famous one (?), as I could not find this name anywhere.

 

5) Page 466: 行観: Yuki-??? I really don’t have a clue with this one.

 

If you managed to read up to here, my sincere thanks. I apologize if this topic is a bit too die-hard (or just boring) but I really would like to know the solutions to these “mysteriesâ€. A big thank you in advance for any help.

 

Wim

 

PS: if someone would be interested in having the completed index, just let me know and I will gladly share it. For every of the 897 smiths I have put the name, classifier (school, family name, …), era, province, period and skill level in a table. I have included kanji as well as romaji, so the result is a ms-word document of approximately 3 megabytes.

 

[John A Stuart]

Hi Wim, I shall give you what the english index says.

1) pg 99-Kanekuni, Kaneie

2) pg 187-Daiichi, Takahira, Takatsuna, Takamitsu

3) pg 405-Masumori, Fujimasa

4) pg 466-Yoshinori, Yukichika, Yukikane

John

[Wim V]

Thanks a lot for your help John, I really appreciate it.

 

This brings me already a step further: Daichi (大知), Masumori (増盛) and Yukichika (行観) seem OK to me.

 

Unfortunately, although Kaneie (兼宿) and Yoshinori (義憲) are possible correct readings for the given kanji, they still leave me with the feeling that they don't fit in the place where they are listed in the book. I find it very hard to believe that Fujishiro puts almost 900 smiths nicely ordered according to their names in a book, and that two of them, are placed completely out of the logical order. So I still believe (hope?) there has to be an alternate reading for these two cases, that Fujishiro had in mind when he placed these two names exactly where he did, so that they fit in the logical order of the list.

 

Does anyone have any more ideas on the reading of 兼宿 and 義憲 ?

 

If only they would place hiragana next to the kanji to clarify the pronunciation, that would make life so much easier ! :?

[John A Stuart]

Yes, A lot of modern texts have furigana to help identify a character that is unfamiliar, I, too, wish more texts had this feature. John

[Nobody]

Based on their order in the book, they seem to have been read as follows by Fujishiro.

兼宿 – Kaneyado

義憲 – Giken

 

Anyway, no one knows the actual readings of old names, I think.

[Stephen]

do you need a English Index for Koto shinto Fujishiro?

[Wim V]

Thank you very much Moriyama-san for confirming these somewhat special readings. It's quite a relieve to see that my thoughts were not that silly after all.

 

@ Stephen: Thanks for the offer but I'm ok now. I know an english index for Fujishiro (koto & shinto) already existed, but I wanted to make one myself just for the learning experience. Also I believe the existing index contains only romaji, where I preferred to have one including the original kanji (next to the romaji). Thanks to the input of the board members here, my koto index is now finished. I plan to make a similar index on the shinto volume in the future but I haven't got the book yet.

 

Best regards everyone,

[Brian]

Great work Wim! That must have taken some time and dedication, and must have been a really educational experience.

You are going to have to field off all the requests for it now :D

I would suggest publishing it, but I think maybe there were copyright issues with the last attempt

 

Brian

[John A Stuart]

That's funny Brian, having already sent that self-same request. :lol: John

[Wim V]

Thank you for the compliment Brian. It has taken me a little less than 3 months to complete the work, spending nearly all of my free time on it. But I really enjoyed doing it.

 

As a matter of fact I don't intend to publish or make any profit of this index, as I don't want problems with copyright issues. But anyone interested is welcome to send me a PM (as some members already did) and I will send you the file, for personal use only off course.

 

Wim

[kazarena]

Impressive work! I had the same thing in mind some time ago after getting Fujishiro in Japanese. But then fortunately for my impatience and unfortunately for my ability to decypher mei, I got the full translation before the work started

 

So now all I can do is envy you :lol:

 

Regards,

Stan N.