James William Breen (born 1947) is an Australian retired academic, computational linguist and lexicographer. He is best known for creating and maintaining several foundational free resources for Japanese language learning and computational linguistics, including the EDICT/JMDict Japanese–English dictionaries, the KANJIDIC kanji dictionary, and the WWWJDIC online search portal. These resources are considered "reliable and close to comprehensive" and form the backbone of many popular Japanese dictionary applications and websites.
Career
Industry and Academia
After completing a BSc in mathematics at the University of Melbourne, Breen began his career in 1968 as a trainee programmer for the Australian Postmaster-General's Department. He subsequently worked for the Defence Department and a private consultancy, specialising in systems programming, computer networking, and communications. During this time, he also earned an MBA from the University of Melbourne.
Contributions to Japanese Lexicography
Following his retirement, Breen's research interests shifted decisively to computational linguistics. His major project has, for a very long time, been the development and curation of free, open-source Japanese lexical resources. As of 2025, Breen is still constantly engaged in updating and adding entries into the file.
- KANJIDIC: A machine-readable dictionary file containing detailed information on thousands of kanji, including readings, meanings, and reference codes.
- WWWJDIC: A long-running web portal and server that provides a free interface to search the EDICT/JMDict and KANJIDIC files.