10000 Japanese Idioms

William de Lange was born in 1964 in Naarden, the Netherlands to Dutch and English parents. In the late 1980s, he traveled to Japan, where he supported himself by making traditional Japanese scrolls, working as a carpenter, and writing articles for the Japan Times Weekly. Having studied at Leiden and Waseda universities during the nineties, he lived in Japan for the next decade, studying the art of Japanese fencing under Akita Moriji sensei, eighth dan master of the Shinkage-Ryu. Since then, he has written a large number of books on Japanese history, culture, and art. More recently, he has appeared in the Netflix documentary Age of Samurai. His many books include Samurai Battles, Samurai Sieges, An Encyclopedia of Japanese Castles, and The Siege of Osaka Castle. He is perhaps best known for his epic history of the Yagyu clan, and his acclaimed biography of Miyamoto Musashi.

What student of Japanese has not grappled with the amazing diversity and tantalizingly elusive nuances of its idioms? One certainly would not want to confuse, for example, ki ga mawaru (to be considerate) with ki o mawasu (to be suspicious). And it would be useful to know whether your boss is hara ga tatsu (angry) or merely ki ga tatsu (upset). Indeed, even a single idiom can have a bewildering number of meanings depending on context; te o ireru, for instance, can mean tidying up (as a room), sounding out someone, or making a raid.This dictionary offers the most comprehensive compilation and English translation of those idiomatic expressions that so enrich the Japanese language but fail to find their way into conventional dictionaries. It presents more than 10000 idiomatic phrases under 1000 main entries, including several thousands of idioms never presented and explained in English before. Multiple sample sentences are given for each entry, and furigana allows even beginning students to pronounce correctly and to use the expressions immediately. A thumb index and two-color printing, with all kanji and kana in red, make entries exceptionally easy to access.