Japanese in Windows 7

Had previously mentioned how a registry key edit enables you to change the keyboard layout used by Microsoft for Japanese input in Windows 7, saw a query on how exactly to get Japanese input itself to work.

Luckily and to our convenience, Japanese characters should now display by default in Windows 7, so there should be no need to have an option installed like the Eastern Asian Languages package known from Windows XP.

If Japanese characters already display correctly, how to enable Japanese input allowing you to type in Japanese? Well, to activate Japanese input/IME in Windows 7, you can do the following.

Click the Windows start button, in the default Windows 7 start menu select and click ‘Control Panel’. The ‘Control Panel’ window will appear, there select and click ‘Change keyboards or other input methods’ (which appears under the ‘Clock, Language and Region’ section when using the category view).

The ‘Regional And Language’ window will appear with the ‘Keyboards and Languages’ tab preselected. Under the ‘Keyboards and other input languages’ section, click the ‘Change keyboards’ button.

The ‘Text Services and Input Languages’ window should now appear onscreen with the ‘General’ tab preselected.

In the ‘Installed services’ section you can see which input languages are already available for immediate use. To add Japanese or another language, click the ‘Add’ button.

In the ‘Add Input Language’ window, scroll down the list of available languages until you find Japanese, expand it by clicking the + icon next to the language, then expand the ‘Keyboard’ line and check the checkboxes for ‘Japanese’ and ‘Microsoft IME’. With the checkboxes active, click the ‘Ok’ button.

Once back in the ‘Text Services and Input Languages’ window, you can click the ‘Apply’ button followed by the ‘Ok’ button to close that screen and confirm your newly added input language(s).

By default, changing between input languages can be done by pressing the Left Alt + Shift key sequence, but you can also set hot keys for each input languages.

To do so, in the ‘Text Services and Input Languages’ window you were previously at, go to the ‘Advanced Key Settings’ tab.
Here, the ‘Hot keys for input languages’ will display the active key sequences. To configure hot keys first highlight the desired input language and then click the ‘Change Key Sequence’ button below.

In the ‘Change Key Sequence’ pop-up window, check the ‘Enabled Key Sequence’ checkbox and select the desired key you want to associate that input language with, click ‘Ok’ when done.

As in below example, I personally linked Japanese input to the Ctrl + 1 key sequence, while Dutch is set to the Ctrl + 2 sequence.

This should work for the Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate, 32bit or 64bit versions of Windows 7 RTM 7600.13685.

If you want the entire Windows operating system itself in Japanese, you will either need a Japanese Windows version or if using Windows 7 Ultimate, selecting Japanese as operating system language.