Purpose and Structure of This Glossary
This is an online glossary service created and provided by the Physical Society of Japan, based on the “Glossary of Academic Terms: Physics Edition” (published by Baifukan, 1999 Revised Edition, 3rd Printing). It contains Japanese-English translations of approximately 15,000 basic physics terms. Its purpose is to support international students studying physics in Japanese and foreign researchers conducting research in Japan, as well as to organize the inconsistent academic terminology that abounds on the internet.
The original “Glossary of Academic Terms: Physics Edition” was first published in 1954 under the leadership of the Ministry of Education (at the time). Although it underwent a major revision in 1990, the content remained almost unchanged despite subsequent reprints. In preparing this online version, we have selected and revised some terms and added new ones, taking into account the developments in physics over the past 35 years. Academic disciplines evolve daily, and terminology naturally changes along with them. Therefore, we plan to continuously update this glossary in the future, taking into account feedback from the JPS members.
Features of the online version:
The content is updated regularly to reflect advances in physics.
The search function allows you to search for specific terms using Japanese (kanji and furigana), Romanized Japanese, or English.
Each term includes the following information:
- Japanese: The primary Japanese kanji spelling
- English: The corresponding English spelling (proper nouns are written in their original language whenever possible)
- Japanese furigana (hiragana)
- Romanization: Primarily the Hepburn style
- Notes and explanations: Notes and explanatory text are provided as needed
Copyright and Citations
The copyright of the glossary data published on this service belongs to The Physical Society of Japan. When citing this data, please clearly state “Physics Glossary (The Physical Society of Japan).” For further details, please refer to the separately established “Terms of Use.”