Wamyō Ruijushō

The Wamyō ruijushō or Wamyō ruijūshō (倭名類聚抄^?, "Japanese names [for things], classified and annotated") is a 938 CE Japanese dictionary of Chinese characters. The Heian period scholar Minamoto no Shitagō (源順, 911–983 CE) began compilation in 934, at the request of Emperor Daigo's daughter. This Wamyō ruijushō title is abbreviated as Wamyōshō, and has graphic variants of 和名類聚抄 with wa "harmony; Japan" for wa "dwarf; Japan" and 倭名類聚鈔 with shō "copy; summarize" for shō "copy; annotate".

The Wamyō ruijushō is the oldest extant Japanese dictionary organized into semantic headings, analogous to a Western language thesaurus. This ancient lexicographical collation system was developed in Chinese dictionaries like the Erya, Xiao Erya, and Shiming. The Wamyōshō categorizes kanji vocabulary, primarily nouns, into main headings (bu ) divided into subheadings (rui ). For instance, the tenchi (天地 "heaven and earth") heading includes eight semantic divisions like seishuku (星宿 "stars and constellations"), un'u (雲雨 "clouds and rain"), and fūsetsu (風雪 "wind and snow").

Each dictionary entry gives the Chinese character, sources cited, Chinese pronunciations (with either a homonym or fanqie spelling), definitions, and corresponding Japanese readings (in the ancient Man'yōgana system using kanji to represent Japanese pronunciation). It cites over 290 sources, both Chinese (for example, the Shuowen Jiezi) and Japanese (the Man'yōshū).

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