How to read and write in Japanese

This guide aims at explaining Article description::how to read and write in Japanese on a non-Japanese system. Please feel free to amend it based on personal knowledge or experience.

Requirements
In order to support Japanese language and characters, a number of required tools, libraries and capabilities need to be installed on the system.

Japanese fonts
Most non-Japanese systems have no Japanese fonts installed. Whenever a user tries to enter Japanese characters from the keyboard, they will only see small rectangle boxes in place of the characters on the screen.

Japanese Menus and Environment
For those interested (perhaps for immersion based learning) in having a Japanese language based environment, in order to change menus and other materials into the Japanese language, change your profile into LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 (in your locale as well as .bash_profile )

Input method
To read and write in Japanese, the first thing that is needed is a way to enter Japanese characters with the keyboard. This is done via a piece of software usually called an input method. At the moment, for the Japanese language, there are 2 such common methods: anthy and mozc.

With such a software component typing "ta" on the keyboard will input the kana た into the word processor. Some simple manipulation that is relevant to the way the input method works, will permit to easily switch from the hiragana た to the katakana タ.

In a similar way typing "nihon" will input にほん and an other simple manipulation will permit to turn this to the kanji version of this word, 日本.

IME
On top of this users also need a way to switch from the input method normally used for the primary language to the one needed for the Japanese language. This functionality is provided by another piece of software called an IME (Input Method Editor) such as, or.

Once installed, this allows users to switch from one language's input method to the Japanese input method using a key combination or using the mouse to select a relevant icon in the icon tray.

Japanese fonts
As a minimum, install the package.

Additionally, the following packages are also available:

Input tools
It is recommended to use IBus instead of SCIM.

Configuring
See IBus article on running IBus on login.

In the dialog box that appears, click on the "Input method" tab and add the "japanese-anthy" or "Japanese - Mozc" method. Then return to the "General" tab and define a key combination as a keyboard short cut for switching the input method.

Following useful keybindings could be setted up for "Japanese - Mozc" method:

Common Use Flags
The following use flags are commonly employed : cjk - Support for Hanzi-inspired characters (containing two bytes, hence the cause of accented a's cum sans cjk environment) nls - 'native language support' - enables other languages in interface, immqt-bc - For Qt to manage other language inputs immqt - conflicts with immqt-bc as of Qt3. unicode - Standard except for cursive hebrew

Latex
Here are some additional requirements to write Latex files in Japanese.

CJK and xetex support
In order to write Japanese chunks in Latex files, add support for CJK languages and for xetex in Texlive.

This can be accomplished by adding or modifying the following lines in :

Then reinstall the packages:

Here is a working short LaTeX sample:

Editor configuration
To compile and visualize the output of the sample above Texmaker or Texstudio editor needs to be configured properly.

Open Texmaker, and go to ->. Under the tab change the following:


 * At the LaTeX line, change "latex" with "platex".
 * At the Dvipdfm line, change "divipdfm" with "dvipdfmx".

Through the tab, choose "Latex + Dvipdfm + View PDF".

Finally go to the tab, choose UTF8 encoding and deselect  on the dictionary line.