Help:Installing Japanese character sets

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This help page will help you to install Japanese character fonts so that your computer will display Japanese characters properly on the Internet in your web browser. All modern operating systems and web browsers support Japanese characters, and they are used in many different articles throughout Wikipedia. Some computers with English or other Western operating systems do not show Japanese characters by default, but most require only a minimal amount of work to install or activate the capability.

If you came here by clicking the ^? near some Japanese characters, and are interested in how Japanese is displayed on Wikipedia, see § Note about displaying Japanese on Wikipedia at the end of this page.

Windows

Vista or later

By default, all necessary fonts and software are installed in Windows Vista (2007) or later. To input Japanese on a non-Japanese version of the OS, however, the Japanese input method editor must be enabled from the Language & region (Windows 11), Language (Windows 10), Region and Language (Windows 7 and 8) or Regional and Language Options (Vista) section of the Control Panel.

XP

A Windows XP CD-ROM is needed to install support for East Asian languages. (Non-East Asian versions of Windows only, as East Asian versions have native Japanese support.)

macOS

By default, all necessary fonts and software are installed in Mac OS X v10.2 (2002) or later.

Linux

Arch Linux and Manjaro Linux

# pacman -S otf-ipafont

Debian and Ubuntu

Installing the ttf-takao-mincho package will add support for displaying Japanese text in Debian or Ubuntu. You can do this with one of the following commands:

# apt-get install fonts-takao-mincho

More fonts can be installed with this command:

# apt-get install fonts-takao

Gentoo Linux

Install a Japanese font package, for example one of these:

# emerge media-fonts/sazanami

# emerge media-fonts/mikachan-font-otf

Mageia

You need a Japanese font package, for example one of these:

# urpmi fonts-ttf-japanese

# urpmi fonts-ttf-japanese-extra

OpenSUSE 11.4

By default, the Japanese fonts are installed during the DVD standard install.

If additional Japanese fonts or Japanese language input is needed, the installation of additional packages is required.

In order to install those packages, follow the step-by-step instructions below:

Open the YaST Control Center.
Select System on the left panel, and then select Language (Blue flag Icon) on the right panel. -A new separate window will open-
On the Language window scroll down the "Secondary Languages" list and mark down "Japanese"
Click the OK button on the down-right corner. -The installation of the necessary packages for Japanese language support will begin-

Once the installation is performed a reboot is required in order to use the new language settings. This method is also valid to install support for any other language.

FreeBSD

With X.Org 7.x and above, install the package x11-fonts/font-jis-misc:

pkg install font-jis-misc

Please note that the package version may be different. Alternatively, this can be easily accomplished by installing from the ports tree:

cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/font-jis-misc

make install clean

Unicode Japanese fonts

Most modern operating systems use Unicode to display Japanese characters. Many fonts have been developed to display Japanese Unicode characters, and many of them are available for downloading over the Internet.

List of free Japanese fonts

Note about displaying Japanese on Wikipedia

When Japanese is included in an article on Wikipedia, it is almost always placed within the {{Nihongo}} template, which helps to standardize the appearance of the Japanese characters by telling computers they should be rendered with Japanese font instead of font for other languages which also use logographs, as well as presenting the translation and romanization of those characters. If you look at the code of the page (by clicking on the Edit tab at the top of the page or on the Edit link for that particular section), you will see something like what appears on the Code line in the following table:

Code	`{{Nihongo\|English\|Kanji\|Rōmaji\|extra\|extra2}}`
Gives	English (Kanji, Rōmaji, extra) extra2

This template marks the Kanji segment as being in Japanese Kanji, which helps web browsers and other user agents to display it correctly. The template uses the following parameters

English. Optional. The word as translated into English. Note that this will sometimes be the actual Japanese word due to it being adopted into English.
Kanji. Required. The word in Japanese kanji and/or kana, the logographic writing system.
Romaji. Optional. The word in Japanese Romaji, the Romanized syllabic writing system used for foreign words. Also known as a "transliteration".
extra. Optional. Can also be expressed as a named parameter, extra=
extra2. Optional. Can also be expressed as a named parameter, extra2=. It is only useful in ";" definitions (extra2 will be displayed without bold, whereas text following the template will get the bold).

Examples

Regular use:

Code	`{{Nihongo\|English\|英語\|eigo}}`
Gives	English (英語, eigo)

Without English:

Code	`{{Nihongo\|\|英語\|eigo}}`
Gives	eigo (英語)

With extra2:

Code	`; {{Nihongo\|\|虚無僧\|komusō\|extra2="Priest of nothingness"}}` `: Mendicant priest of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism.`
Gives	komusō (虚無僧) "Priest of nothingness" Mendicant priest of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism.

Without extra2:

Code	`; {{Nihongo\|\|虚無僧\|komusō}} "Priest of nothingness"` `: Mendicant priest of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism.`
Gives	komusō (虚無僧) "Priest of nothingness" Mendicant priest of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism.

If you have questions regarding Japanese characters or the use of this template, please post your question(s) on the talk page of WikiProject Japan.