Jim Breen

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.

From December 2000 to June 2001, Breen was a Visiting Professor at the Research Institute for the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan.

In 2009, he commenced a part-time PhD in computational linguistics at the University of Melbourne, supervised by Timothy Baldwin. His thesis, "Extraction of neologisms from Japanese corpora," was submitted in 2017.

Personal life

Breen currently lives in Camberwell, Victoria with his wife, Julia, a Suzuki method music teacher. They have three adult children and grandchildren. An active rower, he is a member and former treasurer of the Hawthorn Rowing Club. He and his wife also maintain a weekend home in Jamieson, Victoria. Breen has been a dedicated user of the Linux operating system since 1994 and is an occasional music reviewer for the Classic Melbourne website.