All kanji characters to be usable on computers

Dec 26, 2017 | News On Japan

Dec 26, 2017 (NHK) - Japan's Information-technology Promotion Agency and the industry ministry have concluded a 15-year project to enable computers to handle all kanji characters.

They have assigned universal codes and registered 60,000 characters based on international standards.

Distinctive universal codes need to be assigned to individual characters and letters so that computers can handle them.

The codes were initially allocated to only 10,000 kanji characters.

Computer makers have assigned codes that make it possible for their products to display some of the remaining characters. But these can't be correctly displayed on other makers' products that don't share the codes.

Experts say the project not only enables computers to correctly show all names written in kanji, but will also make it possible to accurately analyze big data. This includes the names of places using various Kanji characters.

An agency official says attention has been given to names in family registries, as this is important to establishing identity. But he says computers have trailed behind in handling Kanji names accurately. He predicts enabling computers to correctly handle characters will become even more important.

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