These three Japanese collation systems were borrowed and adapted from Chinese character dictionaries. The Japanese writing system originated with the introduction of Chinese characters around the 4th century CE, and early Japanese dictionaries developed from Chinese dictionaries circa the 7th century CE. In general, jikeibiki organization is for a readers' dictionary, bunruitai for a writers' dictionary, and onbiki for both types. onbiki (? "pronunciation arrangement") "phonetic collation organization by the Japanese syllabary in iroha or goj?on ordering".jikeibiki (? "character shape arrangement") "logographic collation organizing kanji dictionaries by radicals (recurring graphic components)".bunruitai (? "classification form") "semantic collation grouping words with similar meanings thesaurus-like organization".Bailey (1960:4) discusses how Japanese lexicography differentiates semantic, graphic, and phonetic collation methods, namely:
In contrast, the Japanese writing system, with kanji, hiragana, and katakana, creates complications for dictionary ordering. Lexicographical collation is straightforward for romanized languages, and most dictionaries enter words in alphabetical order. The jiten, jisho, and jibiki terms for dictionaries of kanji "Chinese characters" share the element ji (? "character graph letter script writing"). The usual Japanese word for "encyclopedia" is hyakka jiten (? "100/many subject dictionary", see Japanese encyclopedias). However, Chinese distinguishes their pronunciations, avoiding the potential ambiguities of Sino-Japanese jiten: cídi?n ? "word dictionary", zìdi?n ? "character dictionary", or shìdi?n ? "encyclopedia". The first three homophonous jiten compounds of ten (? "reference work dictionary classic canon model") are Chinese loanwords. "character pull/arrange) "character dictionary dictionary" "character book") "character dictionary dictionary" "word book") "dictionary wordbook lexicon glossary" "thing reference-work") "encyclopedia, encyclopedic dictionary" "character reference-work") "character dictionary" "word reference-work") "dictionary lexicon glossary" It also uses dictionary to translate six Japanese words. The Wiktionary uses English dictionary to define a few synonyms including lexicon, wordbook, vocabulary, thesaurus, and translating dictionary. First, it will be useful to introduce some key Japanese terms for dictionaries and collation (ordering of entry words) that the following discussion will be using.