If you'd like to have further information on the Japanese language,
please continue to the following articles.
Description for Japanese
Description of the Japanese language system
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Japanese consists of "hiragana"(83), "katakana"(86) and
"kanji"(6355).
"Hiragana" and "katakana" are phonogram like the alphabets.
We can combine them to make any word.
"Kanji" is an ideogram, and we can combine a couple of them to make various words.
We generally use "kanji" to express any noun, verb, adjective or adverb, and "hiragana" to complement those words.
"katakana" is used to express mainly borrowed words, or others which cannot be expressed appropriately by "kanji".
We also use the alphanumerics in Japanese text.
So, Japanese language is very complicated, since it's consisted of the combinations of about 6,600 different characters.
The following homepage is useful to learn what Japanese characters mean.
This page provides an easy explanation of the meanings of some "kanji" by photographs and pictures.
Characters & Letters
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Japanese characters code set
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English consists of the alphabets and the numbers (in total 62 characters)
which can be displayed on computer at one byte (7/8 bit, 128/256 alignment).
However, Japanese needs to have two bytes(65,536 alignments) to express one character.
This large number may cause various unexpected difficulties,
particularly for exchanging information between different PC environments.
Therefore, you have to have some basic knowledge of the Japanese character codes.
In the English language world, one-byte character code set "ASCII" is used,
which includes the alphanumerics ((0-9,A-Z,a-z), special symbols and
control characters. However, this code set cannot display any Japanese.
Two-byte character code sets are , "JIS code", "Shift JIS code" and "EUC code".
These Japanese character code sets contain "ASCII" code, which
enables to display both Japanese and English.
The specification of the character code set and its system of encoding is
shown as blow.
[ ASCII code ]
This code is used for English. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for
Information Interchange, and the definition of its specification is
described in ISO 646-1991. This is constructed by one-byte character(7 bit,
128 alignments). 94 characters of them are used for printable characters
like the alphabets, numbers and symbols, and remaining 34 characters are
assigned for the space and control characters.
[ ISO-8859 ]
This code uses 8 bits(ASCII plus one bit) and defines the extended ASCII
character set which can display characters with accents which are used in
other European languages, Kyrillian characters, or Arabic characters. This
code consists of 9 units, supporting Latin, Kyrillian or Arabic characters
respectively. All European languages can be displayed by this code.
[ JIS code ]
This code is the most popular character code for Japanese language on the
Internet. This is usually used for e-mail and e-news. This code also is
seven-bits system like ASCII code. This code uses the same code area (
20H-80H ) as ASCII, so the escape sequence identifies a character as
Japanese or English. In order to differentiate ASCII code from Japanese
code, Japanese is put between shift-in (ESC $ B) and shift-out (ESC (J).
ISO-2022-JP defined in RFC-1468 is this JIS code.
[ Shift JIS code ]
This code is defined by Microsoft Co., Ltd, and is used in Windows95,
MS-DOS and Macintosh. This is widely used for PC. Since this code doesn't
use the same code area as the ASCII code, the escape sequence is not
necessary. For Japanese, the most significant bit of the first byte is
always "1"(one)e.g.(80H-A0H, E0H-EFH), and this bit can identify a
character as Japanese or English.
[ EUC code ]
This code is used for Japanese language system of the UNIX work station.
The code system is eight-bit using vacant area
(the most significant bit of the first bit:1) of ASCII code.
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Resources
RFC1468 / Japanese Character Encoding for Internet Messages
RFC1554 / ISO-2022-JP-2: Multilingual Extension of ISO-2022-JP
Japanese character code sets which are used in the Internet can be
classified as below:
E-mail and News Group use JIS code. WWW browsers (Internet Explore,
Netscape Communicator) can use any Japanese code. Which Japanese code to
use is specified by the PC environment you use to make a home page. For
example, PC (Windows and Mac) needs the Shift-JIS code, and the UNIX
workstation has the EUC code.
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| WWW | JIS, Shift-JIS, EUC |
| E-Mail | JIS |
| News Group | JIS |
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Description of META TAG in the HTML file can inform your WWW browser of the
character code set used in the web site. When you prepare a Japanese HTML
file, we recommend you to put the following description in the file
according to the character code set you used.
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| Shift-JIS |
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type"
CONTENT="text/html;charset=Shift_JIS"> |
| EUC |
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type"
CONTENT="text/html;charset=EUC-JP"> |
| JIS (ISO-2022) |
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type"
CONTENT="text/html;charset=ISO-2022-JP"> |
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If your WWW browser cannot correctly display Japanese, many of the cases
are caused by a mismatch of your Japanese character code set in the HTML
file and that of the WWW browser. In this case, you need to confirm what
character set was settled in the WWW browser.
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Japanese Fonts
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English and Japanese fonts are pre-installed
in Japanese versions of Windows and Mac OS9.0 and later.
Web browsers yse the font selected in <FONT FACE="...">.
If no Japanese fonts are installed in a computer's OS,
no Japage text will appear in the browser when it accesses a Japanese Web page.
(Graphics containing Japanese, however, will be viewable).
The following basic fonts are installed in Japanese version Windows/Mac operating systems.
These fonts can be assigned to Japanese web pages.
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Japanese fonts (Windows)
Japanese fonts (Macintosh)
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If FONT FACE has not been assigned, Japanese text is displayed on Japanese version Windows/Mac OS
computers as below:
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| Windows | Mac |
| English page |  |  |
| Japanese page |  |  |
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Please bear in mind that Japanese text contains ideographic characters,
which are more dinsely written adn complex than most alphabetbic characters.
This makes them difficult or impossible to read at very small font sizes.
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How to display Japanese in the Internet Explorer
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Internet Explorer is the best browser to display Japanese.
This software has a function to automatically install the character code
set and the font which are necessary to display a web page written in a
language which has not been supported.
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How to display Japanese on the Netscape Communicator 6.2
When you display Japanese on the Netscape Communicator, you need to install
Japanese fonts first. Japanese fonts are available through the following
URL. You can download and install them into your PC.
ie3lpkja.exe
You specify a font first. Open Edit | Preferences, and click Appearance |
Font The encode and font selection will be diaplayed as shown as below. You
select Japanese In the article of For the Encoding and Japanese Font in the
articles of Variable Width Font and Fixed Width Font.
Second, open Edit | Preferences and click Navigator | Languages. The
following Languages selection menu is displayed. Click Add button, and
Japanese [ja] is added.
Third, open View | Character Set, and select Japanese (Auto-Detect) as
shown below. Then you can correctly display Japanese on the Netscape
Communicator.
[Note]
This procedure is available to correctly display Japanese on the Netscape
Communicator. However, editing HTML written in Japanese by Text Editor or
HTML Editor requires the applications which support the Japanese character
code.
How to display Japanese on Acrobat Reader
If your OS doesn't support Japanese language, you will have to download a
Japanese font package provided by Adobe and to install it into your PC,
so that your system can correctly display PDF files including Japanese text.
You can download the Japanese font package from the following address.
Please choose Japanese in the language option, and then download. When you
have installed the Japanese font package, your system will correctly
display Japanese in English Acrobat Reader as shown below.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/cjkfontpack.html
How to prepare E-Mail in Japanese
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[ Windows95/98/Me/NT/2000 ]
If you'd like not only to read but also to write Japanese, you will need
Input Method (IME). Microsft Co., Ltd provides you the Global IME 5.02
enhances East Asian text input. This software has a Japanese input function
which is available for Word 2000, Internet Explorer 4.0 and upper, Outlook
Express 5.0 and upper, and Outlook 98 at Windows2000, Windows Millennium, Windows 98, Windows 95, and
Windows NT 4.0. You access the following URL and download Global IME 5.02.
Please note that you have to select "Microsoft Global IME 5.02 for Japanese
- with Language Pack" as an option.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/recommended/ime/default.asp
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[ How to write e-mail in Japanese through Outlook Express ]
- Start Outlook Express, click New Mail, and open the following Mail Message Window.
- Select Japanese JIS in the Format | Encoding
- Move the cursor to the message input area of the Mail Message.
- Select Japanese IME on the task bar as shown (2).
- Put Japanese IME ON on the task bar as shown (3).
- When the window shown at (4) appears, you can input Japanese as the following Message Window.
How to prepare Web Page in Japanese
The surest and best way to prepare your Web Page in Japanese is to install
OS(Windows or MacOS) in Japanese version. As Japanese character code set
contains English characters, Japanese OS is certainly useful to handle any
English document.
Otherwise, you will need at least Input Method(IME) for Japanese as well as
Text Editor or HTML Editor supporting that IME.
Co-using Global IME and Word 2000 provided by Microsoft Co., LTd can edit
Japanese HTML files.
Other Japanese IME softwares, Twinbridge provides Japanese Partner 2000.
HIDEMARU Editor is a Japanese Text Editor available for English
Windows95/98/NT4.0.
Co-using Japanese Partner 2000 and Hidemaru enables you to edit Japanese
texts as shown below:
Last Update March-01-2002
All contents Copyright (C) Kiko-Net
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