Nihonto Kanji Pages - Installing Japanese fonts

The text on these pages use, when referring to Japanese names, places and sword related items, Kanji and Kana. Instructions for displaying Kanji are below. The system for displaying Kana is done with the long (double) vowels shown as Ô ô Û û. The other method is to use Oo Ou Uu Uo to display long vowels. As an example, when we say Moon, the two o's make a long sounding vowel. In Japanese a word like Jû (province) may also be depicted as Juu and would also sound like Jew when spoken.

If you would like to use the Kana instead of the double vowels, then simply hold down the Alt key and type 0244 for ô, 0212 for Ô, 0251 for û and 0219 for Û.

Alt + 0244 = ô

To display Japanese Kanji on your computer you need to have Japanese fonts installed on your operating system. Fortunately, this is a fairly simple thing to do today.

If you are running a Windows system, you will need to do the following.

In Settings, open your control panel and select Regional Options from the selection. Under the General Tab you will notice the Language System selected for your machine in your countries language. Below that is a Language System check box for your operating system, you will already have your native language selected, you also have to select Japanese from the list. You may be asked to use the Windows Installation Cd to install the fonts, just follow the prompts, it is pretty easy. Finish off by rebooting your system.

If you are running Mac OS, you will need to do the following.

Just go to the international section and drag whatever language you want to the top. On the top bar of the desktop will be a flag representing whatever language you want to write in. click on it and you can change to another language.

Mac OS 9 or lower

You need to install the Japanese language kit, and in order to type kanji you have to activate the main dictionary in the language kit menu. Japanese Language Kit for OS9 comes with the install disc for os9. You have to reinstall the os9 disc and click under custom and choose the language packet(s) you want. Make sure they turn off all the other options or they will reinstall the entire OS. After that, you just click on the flag icon on top of the desktop or press apple + space to change.

Next is your browser ( for both PC and Mac)

After your system has restarted, open your Internet Browser and look for the Character Encoding option.

Windows, Internet Explorer. Open Internet Explorer and locate the Options Popup menu by Right Clicking anywhere in the IE Window ( not over an image ) and in the pop up menu look for Encoding. Select Japanese Auto Detect and that should be it.

Netscape. look in the View pull down menu, open Character Coding, then Auto Detect, and select Japanese. I am running Mizilla Firefox, Netscape 7 and IE 6 on WinXP and 2000 and have no problems with Japanese Text. I strongly suggest using the latest browsers available as they will get you going a lot faster.

Macintosh. Internet Explorer. Click the view tab, select the Character Set, then select Japanese Auto Detect.

Netscape. look in the View pull down menu, open Character Coding, then Auto Detect, and select Japanese.

In addition to this, you can install one of several Japanese reading programs that can be downloaded from the internet. There are several available; I found the following links to be helpful.