Typesetting Japanese

Today, I would like to introduce SST JP as an example of the recomposition of kanji and kana in Type Project. SST is a corporate font that was developed jointly by Sony Corporation and Monot…

A method of recomposing kanji and kana to different typesetting is often utilized in Japanese typesetting. As previously introduced in this blog, Mincho typeface is made of a composition bet…

Vertical typesetting and horizontal typesetting are used for different purposes in Japanese. Most kanji and kana characters can be commonly used for both typesetting directions. There are al…

“Leaving space between words” used in English and other languages is not done in Japanese. “Leaving space between words” serves the function of separating words and phrases with word spaces …

There are many kana in texts, but there are many types of kanji characters. In the Japan’s compulsory education, students learn approximately 2,000 kanji characters. Furthermore, much more k…

In the current Japanese kanji-kana notations, approximately 60 to 70% of texts become kana in many cases. As there are only forty-six basic characters for hiragana and katakana, respectively…

The basic of the current Japanese notations is “written in kanji and kana” in which the three character types of kanji, hiragana, and katakana are used in mixture. Kanji is an ideogram origi…