Japanese fonts  span a small scale when compared to the available library of English fonts. And the default installed Japanese typefaces that Microsoft provides, such as MSGothic and MSMincho, are barely enough for variety. Well, not surprising, as very few people really have the need for it… but for people like myself, who want to make use of Japanese fonts in their graphic work, having a wide array of Japanese fonts can be quite useful.

There are, of course, several fonts out there that try to imitate Japanese fonts, or Japanese fonts that can type with English input but these are not actual Japanese input fonts. 

You can find some great Japanese fonts at Wazu Japanese Font Gallery.

Here are a few of my personal picks:

Aquafont | あくあフォント

Aquafont | あくあフォント

*Aquafont is also the font I use for my logo

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Azuki font | あずきフォント

Azuki Font | あずきフォント

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KFhimaji | ＫＦひま字

KFhimaji | ＫＦひま字

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qoocRomanKT | クークロマン・カタカナ

qoocRomanKT | クークロマン・カタカナ

*This font is limited to katakana, and does not seem to follow IME text input… This font was made for the title of the Katahane game, by tarte.

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In addition to these, I use a 57-set font pack  -the Go Ju Nana Nihongo fonts.

Which you can be download here:

Part 1 | Part 2

As a last note,… I’ve found that it can be quite difficult to manage these fonts if you put them all at once into your font library, so install them at your own discretion!

Most of the fonts listed here are applicable to Windows,… I wish I could say the same for a MAC, though.

Instruction:
In order to use these fonts, assuming you are using Windows XP, you need to have Asian text languages and input text installed into your machine. Find out more at Microsoft.

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