Abstract. We present a knowledge-rich approach to Japanese coreference resolution. In Japanese, proper noun coreference and common noun coreference occupy a central position in coreference relations. To improve coreference resolution for such language, wide-coverage knowledge of synonyms is required. We first acquire knowledge of synonyms from large raw corpus and dictionary definition sentences, and resolve coreference relations based on the knowledge. Furthermore, to boost the performance of coreference resolution, we integrate bridging reference resolution system into coreference resolver.