This site contains information for using Japanese on a Macintosh. It is aimed at students, teachers and others who use a Mac predominantly for English, but also want to read, write, browse, and email in Japanese. This front page contains information on activating Japanese support globally in the Mac OS. The pages underneath this one focus on specific tasks and applications: email, web browsing, dictionary software, etc.
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I teach Japanese literature at Williams College. Many years ago I worked briefly as software developer, and I've been using Apple computers since the //e days. The programs I use most often are indicated with this icon: 
I've tried most of them on a wide range of systems over the years, most recently a MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Snow Leopard works a little differently from previous versions of Mac OS, so make sure to follow the instructions for your version of the operating system. You can check this by selecting "About this Mac..." from the Apple menu.
If you have questions or comments about this site, please feel free to email me at bolton at redcocoon.org.
These pages are undergoing a major update in summer 2010. This page was last updated on 6/17/10 .
These days using Japanese with the Mac is relatively seamless. Mac OS comes installed with support for reading and editing Japanese--in documents, in email, and on the web. If you receive Japanese email in Apple's Mail application or go to a Japanese web page in Safari, the Japanese will probably display correctly without your doing anything special or reading any further on this page. If this does not work smoothly, if you want to enable additional features in these programs, or if you want to input Japanese text (to create documents, do web searches, or send email in Japanese, for example), you'll need to take some extra steps. These are described below, and on the other pages of this site.
To enable input in Japanese (or other Asian languages), go to System Preferences from the Apple menu, click on the blue flag icon labeled Language and Text, then select the Input Sources tab. (In earlier versions of Mac OS, this preferences panel is called "International" and the tab is called "Input Menu.") Now check the box next to Kotoeri, which is the name of the Japanese input method, and check Hiragana and Katakana under it. If you are using Mac OS 10.6 or later and have a trackpad, you may also want to check "Traditional Chinese" and/or "Simplified Chinese," and the "Trackpad Handwriting" option under them. This will allow you to enter kanji characters by drawing them on the trackpad. Finally, check the option "Show input menu in menu bar" at the bottom of the preferences pane. Click the images below to enlarge them and see what things should look like. (The images actually show Mac OS 10.5; I'm working on updating them for Snow Leopard now.)
You can now use the menu below (which now appears in the upper right of the menu bar) to select the language and alphabet you want to type in.
Here's an optional tip: there is a keyboard shortcut to switch between languages without using this menu. It is Apple-space bar. You can switch between the last two input methods by pressing this key combination, and in Snow Leopard holding it down it brings up a menu in the center of the screen with input options you can cycle through. Unfortunately, it may not work, because the same shortcut is assigned to Spotlight. You can fix this conflict under System Preferences: click on Keyboard (Keyboard & Mouse in some systems) and select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, then uncheck or reassign one of the conflicting shortcuts. Later versions of Mac OS allow you to fix this under the Spotlight or International sections of System Preferences as well.
That's it! You can now input Japanese in a range of applications. If you don't know how to input text in Japanese, there are a few hints below, under Typing in Japanese, to get you started.
In Mac OS 9--and that includes the Classic Environment that runs older applications within OS X on older PowerPC Macs--you can read and write use Japanese, but you need to take extra steps to make sure these are included when you install or upgrade the system. If you need some guidance on how to install these options on an older Mac OS 9 machine (using the OS 9 install CDs), Nisus Software site has an illustrated guide. If you want to install Japanese into the classic environment of a Power PC OS X machine, use the "Install Language Kits" utility you can find on the hard drive in Applications (Mac OS 9)/Apple Extras/Language Kits. None of this is an issue with the most recent intel-based Macs, since they do not run OS 9 or the classic environment, and so do not support OS 9 applications. Elsewhere on the Internet you might see references to Apple's Japanese Language Kit. This used be sold separately, and was used with very early systems (versions 7 and 8) to allow them to use Japanese.
Once you have enabled the kotoeri input method as shown above, you can select Hiragana or Katakana from the input menu in the upper right of the menu bar in almost any application. (For more on Japanese text-editors and word-processors, see the Japanese Word Processing page on this site.)
For help with the mechanics of entering Japanese text, Helen DeWitt's Multilingual word processing page includes a helpful tutorial aimed at beginners. It was written for the multilingual word processor Mellel, but it can be used with any application.
For the finer points of entering Japanese, you can refer to the kotoeri help. Starting with Mac OS 10.5, this is finally available in English as well as Japanese--which you get seems to depend on whether you've set the Finder's menus to Japanese or English, as described below. But the help is arranged as an FAQ rather than a tutorial, and it is oriented toward people who already have some familiarity with Japanese input and systems, so I am afraid it may be hard to use for beginners. To access this, pull down the input menu when hiragana or katakana is selected, and you'll see kotoeri help among the options.
Most users enter Japanese by typing the pronunciation in roman characters, so you do not need a special Japanese keyboard. If you have a Japanese a keyboard, it has a few extra keys you take advantage of, as well as the option of dispensing with rômaji and having each key map to a specific kana character. The online Apple store now has an option that lets you select a Japanese keyboard as an option when you buy a new Mac.
If you are using a Japanese keyboard or laptop, select the correct keyboard layout and rômaji or kana input method in the kotoeri preferences, on the menu shown above. (Thanks to Tom Gewecke's Multilingual Mac blog for this tip.)
If you have a laptop with Mac OS 10.6 or later, you can also enter kanji characters by writing them with your finger on the trackpad. (The interface is similar to the iPod's.) Make sure Chinese input is activated under System Preferences, as described above. Now select a simplified Chinese or traditional Chinese input scheme (like pinyin) from the input menu on the menu bar, and then go to the input menu again and select "Show Trackpad Handwriting". Here's what it looks like.
Unfortunately, since this is really part of the Chinese input system, it leaves a little to be desired for inputting Japanese kanji. Some Japanese kanji don't exist in the simplified Chinese character set, while others don't exist in traditional one, and still others exist in neither. So if you use this input method extensively, you will likely have to switch back and forth between simplified and traditional Chinese to generate all the kanji you need.
To enable Japanese menus in the Finder and other applications, go to the Apple menu > System preferences > Language & Text (or International) > Languages tab. Add Japanese to the list of languages, if it does not appear there already. If you drag Japanese above English in the list, the finder and many other applications will open next time with Japanese menus. Even if you do not want Japanese menus, make sure Japanese appears somewhere in your list of languages. Just having it there unlocks Japanese features in certain software, like Japanese encoding in Apple's Mail application.
You can also set the menu language of specific applications individually. Many (though not all) applications have localizations for different countries built in--you just have to activate the Japanese one. There are two ways to accomplish this.
If you are using Mac OS 10.5 or earlier, you can select the application's icon in the finder and choose "Get Info"from the File menu. Expand the Languages section of the Get Info window, and you'll see the languages available for the application. If you check Japanese and uncheck English, you will get Japanese menus; if you check English and uncheck Japanese, you'll get English menus. If both are checked, the language is determined by the order of languages in the International Preferences Pane.
Apple eliminated this feature from the Get Info box in Snow Leopard (10.6), but you can use a third-party application called Language Switcher to accomplish the same thing. It's actually easier than the method above. The developer's page says Language Switcher works with Mac OS 10.5 and later.
Microsoft Office applications have special features for dealing with Japanese, but they are not activated by default. To activate these features you need to use a program called the Microsoft Language Register. (It should be in the Microsoft Office folder under "Additional Tools"; if not, look for it on your Office install CD). Different versions of the Language Register work slightly differently; just open the application and it will give you instructions. Once these features are enabled, the applications will have new menu and preferences options for working with Japanese.
Note that this does not change the menus and interface elements to Japanese; for that follow the procedure above under Choosing English or Japanese Menus in Applications.
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