Book excerpt: Being a successful speaker of a given language involves control of the meaning and use of vocabulary items, taking in their lexical content (what phenomena they refer to), combinatorial behaviour (what items they occur with) and situational characteristics (e.g. as colloquial or formal terms). This essential reference book provides clear information on these aspects for around three hundred groups of Japanese near-synonyms, supplemented by a wide range of authentic examples. The result is a clear profile of the meaning and use of each item, highlighting similarities and distinctions among neighbouring terms and expanding learners' lexical range. The book is designed primarily for English-speaking learners, and the selection of groups and items and the overall treatment adopted reflects the author's extensive experience in teaching Japanese to English speakers. Japanese forms and examples appear in both romanisation and Japanese orthography, and the bilingual indexes allow readers to locate synonyms quickly and easily.