This paper presents a new m e t h o d of analyzing Japanese noun phrases of the form N1 no 5/2. The Japanese postposition no roughly corresponds to of, but it has much broader usage. The method exploits a definition of N2 in a dictionary. For example, rugby no coach can be interpreted as a person who teaches technique in rugby. We illustrate the effectiveness of the m e t h o d by the analysis of 300 test noun phrases.