As the author states in his introduction, There is no final or complete solution to the problem of reading Japanese names written in Chinese characters. Such characters often have special readings as names which are distinct from their usual readings and therefore have to be learned separately. This comprehensive dictionary of 36,000 Japanese names is divided into two parts, the first organized by stroke count, to facilitate the search for readings when the characters are known, and also alphabetically by romanized reading, to facilitate finding the characters for names whose pronunciations are known. Included are the names of more than 7,000 individuals of literary, historical, or artistic importance, while multiple readings are listed in descending order from most to least likely.