Notes on getting japanese inputs/fonts working on linux and learning japanese. My presentation on the topic is here: https://fluxcoil.net/files/speeches/latex_japlinux/japlinux.pdf .

• https://iamacat.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/more-japanese-on-linux-anthy-uim-and-ubuntu-among-others/

• cjk-latex, ptex (non-utf8), XeTeX (japanese typesetting, also left to right writing)
• xelatex, xecjk package
• 日本語のLATEXで幸せになる...かもしれない方法
• options:
  • pdflatex + CJK package
  • xelatex + xeCJK package
  • lualatex + luatex-ja package
  • uplatex or platex: TeX implementations as they were specifically Japanese typography, work differently in some aspects when compared to the more general-purpose implementations from above
  • https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/15516/how-to-write-japanese-with-latex

• with this the kanji/hiragana/katakana are properly used from utf8 tex-files

# cjk
$ yum -y install yum install texlive-cjk.noarch texlive-collection-langcjk.noarch

$ cat minimal_japanese_example.tex
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage[encapsulated]{CJK}
\usepackage{ucs}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\newcommand{\jptext}[1]{\begin{CJK}{UTF8}{min}#1\end{CJK}}
\begin{document}
\jptext{日本語}
\end{document}

$ pdflatex minimal_japanese_example.tex && evince minimal_japanese_example.pdf

I use this on Fedora:

xterm -en UTF-8 -fg white -bg black \
  -fn -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--18-120-100-100-C-90-ISO10646-1 -e bash

Also i tried different fons with xterm, a listing of the available fonts comes back from executing “xlsfonts”. To grab these out containing 'ja' and try them out:

for i in $(xlsfonts|grep ja); do 
    echo "current font: $i"; xterm -fn $i -e 'echo ちち; sleep 10'; 
done

• make sure your terminal supports UTF8, i.e. it can properly display utf8-files, using xterm here

emacs ~/.emacs # and add this:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;                                                                                                                        
;; unicode-setup                                                                                                                            
(prefer-coding-system       'utf-8)
(set-default-coding-systems 'utf-8)
(set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
(set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
(setq default-buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8)
(setq x-select-request-type '(UTF8_STRING COMPOUND_TEXT TEXT STRING))
;; make japanese default choice for input system
(set-input-method 'japanese)

emacs -nw test.tex
# now you can use C-x C-m C-\ and are asked to enter an input method.
# jap<tab><tab> shows a selection, here 
#   'japanese' works for hiragana directly/katakana with <blank> after hiragana-inputs
#   'japanese-katakana' works for katakana-input
# then you can input japanese as with uim.
# use C-\ to switch between english<->japanese input

• tlug++ for so many hints on that
• https://www.edrdg.org/~jwb/mecabdemo.html has a online demo of conversion with MeCab/Unidic
• kakasi: https://kakasi.namazu.org/ . Easy to install and use, but has an old dictionary and is bad for complex sentences. Simple example:

$ echo '私は馬鹿です'| kakasi -JK -i utf8 -o utf8
ワタシはバカです

• MeCab, i.e. with the mecab-ipadic-neologd dictionary ( https://github.com/neologd/mecab-ipadic-neologd ) is more modern.

$ echo 例文文章です。|mecab --node-format='%pS%m[%f[7]]' --eos-format='\n'
例文[レイブン]文章[ブンショウ]です[デス]。[。]

• Fedora: dnf -y install mecab mecab-ipadic

• iso-2022-jp

• font Electroharmonix which is for Romaji characters, but has them look like Kanij/katakana: dafont.com

• By default, libreoffice started to use Chinese variants of some Kanji for me. Use tools → language → for all text → more, then “Default languages for documents” → Asian: Japanese. For example 石炭, second 字, has Chinese and Japanese variants. Also 捨てる.

• cut'n'paste to google translate
• EBView can read EB dictionaries, dictionaries: 広辞苑, 大辞林, Readers+
• Kenkyusha “KOD” online dictionary (not for free)
• Eijiro dictionary
• translating single Japanese words on the commandline, offline:
  • install jmdict https://jmdict.sourceforge.net/
  • and the JMdict dictionary file: https://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/JMdict-EDICT_Dictionary_Project

• PaddleOCR Japanese OCR, Gigazine article