Japanese

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This page offers basic guidance on typesetting a LaTeX document in the Japanese language using the Japanese script.

If you are creating documents primarily or exclusively in Japanese, requiring advanced typesetting features, such as fine-grained control over line breaking, font features, or vertical writing, it’s advisable to use a framework like luatexja. But if you need to create multilingual documents with frequent language switching or your Japanese typesetting needs are relatively basic, babel can often be enough.

Support with the traditional way (ldf)

The Japanese language is supported in babel in the ‘classical’ way based on a ldf file. See babel-japanese for further details.

Support with ini locale file

In luatex (the recommended engine), two transforms control line breaking: spacing.basic and linebreak.strict. See What’s new in babel 24.9. Spacing between characters is set with the ‘provide’ key intraspace.

In xetex (which is currently discouraged), you can use the ‘interchar’ linebreak.basic.

See the manual for further details. See also List of counters for the available Japanese counters.

Here is a minimal sample file with japanese as the main language (assuming luatex).

\documentclass[japanese]{article}

\usepackage[provide=*]{babel}

\babelfont{rm}{Harano Aji Mincho}

\begin{document}

Local name $=$ 日本語

Preface $=$ \prefacename

Today $=$ \today

\end{document}

Contribute

If you are a native speaker or have expertise in this language, you can contribute, make suggestion or request an enhancement by submitting a pull request, opening an issue, or contacting the Babel maintainer with the link above.