In 1925, Ippei Suzuki (鈴木 一平), president of the Taishukan publishing house, requested Morohashi to edit a comprehensive kanji dictionary of an unprecedented scale.
Due to a shortage of skilled craftsmen, Suzuki persuaded Mokichi Ishii (石井 茂吉), co-inventor of phototypesetting, to recreate the necessary fonts.
The original (1955–1960) Dai Kan-Wa Jiten has 13 volumes totaling 13,757 pages, and includes 49,964 head entries for characters, with over 370,000 words and phrases.
It provides encyclopedic information about poetry, book titles, historical figures, place names, Buddhist terms, and even modern expressions.
For Dai Kan-Wa Jiten users unfamiliar with this traditional system of dictionary collation, the final index volume is an essential tool.
The 1990 Goi sakuin (語彙索引, "Vocabulary Index") allows searching for words in Morohashi by their pronunciation in modern kana spelling, instead of the historical system used in Volumes 1–13.
Vocabulary is arranged in the standard gojūon (五十音, "fifty sound") ordering of kana and is cited by volume and page numbers.
Kida Jun'ichirō wrote a Japanese book (1986) about the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, and edited another (1994) about lexicographers that discusses Morohashi's contributions (chap.