his dictionary contains approximately 8000 terms related to traditional Japanese architecture and gardens, painting, sculpture and art-historical iconography from approximately the 1st century A.D. to the end of the Edo period (1868). Terms from related fields such as lacquer, ceramics, textiles and metalwork have been included where they are considered to be of general interest and/or impact on the principal fields of architecture, painting and sculpture. These definitions are not translations from any one Japanese monolingual dictionary, but have been collated from a range of specialist sources and scholarly publications, and from direct observation and study. Many have never before been defined in English.
The entries are arranged in alphabetical order: the romanized term is followed by Japanese characters and a definition in English. All Japanese words included within the definition are romanized, and provided with Japanese characters. An asterisk '*' before any word indicates a cross-reference to a separate entry. Basically, the Hepburn system of romanization has been used, although we follow the hiragana notation system for long vowels (ex. tourou rather than toro) due to the limitation of HTML language. We also have a separate illustrative file to show some special Kanji (Chinese characters) that are not supported by most Japanese word processors. Japanese and other non-English words, with the exception of proper names and entry headings, appear in italics. Different meanings or usages of the same term are listed numerically; 1, 2, 3 etc., but terms whose meaning differs in art history and architecture are treated as separate dictionary entries.
By Sharad Chandra Shukla
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