Over 1500 years ago, Japan began developing its written language using Chinese characters (漢字, kanji). Early on, Japanese words were assigned to Chinese characters by meaning and a way to read Chinese literature in Japanese was developed known as 漢文訓読 (kanbun-kundoku, "Chinese writing Japanese reading"). The Japanese also borrowed the pronunciations of the Chinese characters for their spoken language (音読み, on'yomi, "sound reading") although the sounds generally don't have any resemblance to Chinese pronunciation used today. Today many kanji have more than one on'yomi pronunciation as well as several Japanese ones known as 訓読み (kun'yomi, native Japanese word reading). The Japanese phonetic alphabets (仮名, kana), or syllabaries (片仮名, katakana and 平仮名, hiragana) were also derived from the kanji characters.
Gikun, 義訓 (characters for "meaning" + "Japanese native word"), is a term coined for native Japanese words (or in some cases, Japanese transliterations of foreign words) assigned to kanji characters/compounds (words composed of two or more characters) based upon the meaning of the characters (see antonym: 当て字(ateji, in the narrow sense)). In a very loose sense, all kun'yomi readings may be considered gikun readings as they may also rightly be considered the meaning readings of the kanji. In a stricter sense gikun readings are considered false readings as they disregard the officially recognized kun'yomi pronunciations. When found in literature, gikun readings are generally shown by small print ruby (ルビ) above (horizontal text) or along side (vertical text) the kanji character/compound, unless the gikun reading is well established (熟字訓, jukujikun, literally "familiar" + "character" + "Japanese native reading"), to show how the author intends the word to be read. Many gikun pronunciations of words are not officially recognized because they are so uncommon (perhaps only found in one piece of literature). For more information regarding special kanji readings, see Wikipedia:Kanji.
Gikun readings often provide a more general or synonymous meaning of a kanji character/compound, whereas the meaning(s) of the individual kanji they are affixed to provide more descriptive meaning/sense to the word that is read. Sometimes they provide a more literal meaning for kanji selected for their figurative meaning or vice versa. In yet other instances the gikun reading may simply be an idiosyncratic way to read a word with a Japanese reading (kun'yomi) rather than with a more traditional reading of Chinese origin (on'yomi). There are thousands of gikun in the Meiji (明治) version of the Japanese Bible which can not be found in even the largest of Japanese dictionaries. Large kanji dictionaries record gikun found in classical Chinese literature which has been translated to Japanese, but the gikun found in this classical translation of the Bible which is still in use today are no where to be found. There are also electronic copies of this Bible translation available which do not even provide the readings to allow for proper reading of the text. The aim of this appendix is to record those gikun so that a collection of them can easily be found online.
For this version of the Bible, the translators chose to use an archaic literary form which some Japanese still use today when rendering the Chinese classics in Japanese (see 漢文, kanbun). This literary style is known as 和漢混淆文 (wakankonkōbun, jumbled Japanese and Chinese writing). The classical Japanese literary grammar varies greatly from that of modern Japanese and can be very difficult for even Japanese people of average education to understand (comparable to how the King James Version of the Bible can be very difficult for the English speaking people of today). The elegant literary language and extensive use of gikun in this translation demonstrate how the Japanese translators felt that no ordinary everyday language and writing style would be worthy of The Bible, the Word of God, which they desired to reverence highly with suitable language. Interestingly, this line of thinking was in stark contrast to the desire of the foreign missionaries who wanted a translation written in the language of the common people.
This appendix records the gikun readings found in the 1887 Meiji Version of The Bible (明治元訳聖書, Meiji Moto Yaku Seisho, "Meiji Version" of the Bible) also known as 文語訳 (Bungo Yaku, "Literary Translation"). Included in this list are the gikun words which can not be found in any of the large online dictionary databases, https://furigana.info/, nor among the kun'yomi / 難読 (nandoku, difficult readings) listed in 漢語林 (Kangorin), Taishūkan Shoten, 1995, by Kamada Tadashi and Yoneyama Toratarō. Eventually this list may be expanded to include all gikun found in this Bible regardless of how common it may be found in Japanese literature.
Cross references after the meaning of each word show how the word is conventionally written in Japanese and show Sino-Japanese words composed of the same characters with on'yomi reading, if extant. Clicking a gikun headword will take you to a page where additional information is provided. In some cases, a further explanation is supplied as to why the particular kanji may have been chosen to form the word. You will also find a quotation in which the term can be seen as it is used in the context of this Japanese Bible translation.
For the headwords, both modern form kanji, 新字体 (shinjitai, "new character form"), and obsolete forms, 旧字体 (kyūjitai, "old character form"), are shown if significantly different as well as any differing archaic kana spellings, since these archaic forms are found in the Japanese text which is quoted in its original form. 表外字 (Hyōgaiji, kanji outside the standard list) are shown in kyūjitai only even if modern forms exist, since such modern forms are not in common use.
The English translation provided is that of the 1611, King James Version of the Bible (Holy Bible: Standard Text, Oxford University Press, 1769), which this Japanese translation was based upon. The Japanese quotations are from 1887, 旧新約全書 米国聖書会社 (1914) (1887, Complete Books of the Old and New Testament, American Bible Society, 1914) and page numbers are linked to the corresponding page number of a scanned online copy. Page numbering restarts in the New Testament, so "NT" has been used to designate page numbers of the New Testament and "OT" for those of the Old.
