Help:Installing Japanese character sets

This help page will help you install Japanese character sets so that your computer will display them properly on the internet in your web browser as all modern operating systems and web browsers support Japanese fonts. Many computers with English or other Western operating systems do not show them by default, but most require a minimal amount of work to install or activate the capability.

Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu
Installing the ttf-kochi-mincho package will add support for displaying Japanese text in the Debian GNU/Linux or Ubuntu distribution. You can do this with the following command:


 * apt-get install ttf-kochi-mincho

Fedora
Install the appropriate ttfonts packages.

For Fedora Core 3, the packages are ttfonts-zh_TW (traditional Chinese), ttfonts-zh_CN (simplified Chinese), ttfonts-ja (Japanese) and ttfonts-ko (Korean). For example,
 * yum install ttfonts-ja

As of Fedora Core 4, you need fonts-chinese, fonts-japanese and/or fonts-korean.

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


 * pkg_add -r font-jis-misc-1.0.0.tbz

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

Gentoo GNU/Linux
Install a Japanese font package, for example one of these:
 * emerge media-fonts/sazanami
 * emerge media-fonts/mikachan-font-otf

Also, put useflag 'cjk' to /etc/make.conf and update your system
 * emerge -uDN world

Mac OS X
By default, all necessary fonts and software are installed in Mac OS X [10.2 Jaguar] (2002) and higher.

For Mac OS X 10.1 multilingual software updates are available as free downloads from Apple's website. The Asian Language Update will install support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.


 * Mac OS X Language Support Updates at apple.com

Mandriva Linux 2007
Install one or several Japanese font packages. The most common is fonts-ttf-japanese, but in addition you can also install fonts-ttf-japanese-extra, fonts-ttf-japanese-ipamona and fonts-ttf-japanese-mplus_ipagothic.

Make sure you have UTF-8 fonts enabled, as they may not be if you have upgraded from a former version of Mandrake/Mandriva.

openSUSE
If you install it from DVD, you don’t need to install anything.

Unicode Japanese fonts

 * List of free Japanese fonts

95, 98, ME and NT
Your system should offer to download Asian fonts by default while viewing pages in those languages, just as long as you're using Internet Explorer. 

Otherwise, update your system manually with the language support packs.

2000

 * Instructions for Windows 2000

XP and Server 2003
The Windows CD-ROM is needed while installing support for East Asian languages. (Non-East Asian localizations only)
 * Instructions for Windows XP and Server 2003

Alternatively, you can download the Japanese language pack by itself from Microsoft. No disc is needed for this option.

Windows Vista, 7 and 8
Both Windows Vista, 7 and 8 include native OS support for displaying Japanese text by default. In order to input Japanese on a non-Japanese version of the OS, however, the Japanese input method editor must be enabled from the Region and Language (Windows 7 and 8) or Regional and Language Options (Vista) section of the Control Panel.