The Shinsen jikyō is the first Japanese dictionary containing nativekun'yomi "Japanese readings" of Chinese characters. The title is also written 新選字鏡 with the graphic variantsen for sen. The Heian PeriodBuddhist monk Shōjū completed the Shinsen jikyō during the Shōtai era. The preface explains that his motivation for compiling a Japanese dictionary was the inconvenience of looking up Chinese characters in the Tang Dynasty dictionary by Xuan Ying, the Yiqiejing yinyi. The preface credits two other Chinese dictionaries: the Yupian, which enters 12,158 characters under a system of 542 radicals, and the Qieyunrime dictionary, which enters 16,917 characters categorized by tones and syllable rimes. Don C. Bailey says:
In general, the Shinsen jikyō resembles the , but Shōjū specifically states in the preface that he acquired a copy of this work only in 892 after he had completed his first draft, and that he thereafter used it as supplementarymaterial. Whether or not the format of the was imitated, a dictionary or dictionaries of the same type must have served as a model.
Shōjū's model balances two traditional methods of collating Chinese dictionaries: semantic organization like the Erya and logographic radicals like the Shuowen Jiezi. He introduces a novel Japanese system of 160 radicals that exhibit semantic organization. For example, the first seven are Heaven, Sun, Moon, Meat, Rain, Air, and Wind. The Shinsen jikyō not only reduced the number of radical headings, but also logically arranged them by meanings. Compare the earlier Japanese dictionary Tenrei Banshō Meigi that uses 534 radicals adapted from the original 540 in the Shuowen Jiezi. The received edition Shinsen jikyō dictionary contains 21,300 character entries in 12 fascicles. Each head entry gives the Chinese character, Chinese pronunciations, definitions, and Japanese equivalents. This dictionary notes over 3,700 Japanese pronunciations, and cites early texts, for instance, the circa 822 CE Buddhist Nihon Ryōiki. The Shinsen jikyō is the first Japanese dictionary to include kokuji "national characters" invented in Japan. The modern Mojikyocomputer font software includes character data from the ancient Shinsen Jikyō and Jikyōshū.
