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. Throughout Wikipedia, Japanese characters are used in many different articles. 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.
Note
If you came here by clicking a small ? near some Japanese characters (called kanji or kana), here is an explanation of how the Japanese is formatted with the English and romanization. When Japanese is included in an article on Wikipedia, it is almost always placed within a template which helps to standardize the appearance of the Japanese characters, as well as 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 |
|
| Gives |
|
Without extra2:
| Code |
|
| Gives |
|
If you have questions regarding Japanese characters or the use of this template, please post your question on the talk page of WikiProject Japan.
Specific operating systems
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
More fonts can be installed with this command:
apt-get install ttf-kochi-mincho ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-mikachan ttf-sazanami-gothic ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-vlgothic
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
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.
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
Windows
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. [1]
Otherwise, update your system manually with the language support packs.
2000
XP and Server 2003
A Windows CD-ROM is needed while installing support for East Asian languages, even if it's not the one used during installation. (Non-East Asian localizations only, as those from East Asia install Japanese support natively.)
Alternatively, you can download the Japanese language pack by itself from Microsoft. No disc is needed for this option.
Vista and Windows 7
Both Vista and Windows 7 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) or Regional and Language Options (Vista) section of the Control Panel.