The IBM Kanji System was announced in 1971 to support

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

processing on the IBM System/360 computers. It was later enhanced by the support of

IBM System/34 The IBM System/34 was an IBM midrange computer introduced in 1977. It was withdrawn from marketing in February 1985. It was a multi-user, multi-tasking successor to the single-user System/32. It included two processors, one based on the System/ ...

IBM 5550 IBM 5550 is a personal computer series that IBM marketed in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China in the 1980s and 1990s, for business use customers. In Japan, it was introduced in 1983 and promoted as "" because it had three roles in one machine: a ...

and

DOS/V DOS/V is a Japanese computing initiative starting in 1990 to allow DOS on IBM PC compatibles with VGA cards to handle double-byte (DBCS) Japanese text via software alone. It was initially developed from PC DOS by IBM for its PS/55 machines (a ...

General

The IBM Kanji System became available in a series of staged announcements. Its initial technical demonstration was done at

Expo '70 The or Expo 70 was a world's fair held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fair ...

in Osaka, and an official announcement was made in 1971, including:Kurt Hensch, Toshiaki Igi, Masumi Iwao, Akira Oda and Toru Takeshita. "IBM History of Far Eastern Languages in Computing, in 3 Parts" in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 27 Number 1 ( January - March, 2005 ) * IBM 2245 Kanji Printer * IBM 5924 Kanji Keypunch * IBM System/360-

System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a model range of IBM mainframe computers announced on June 30, 1970, as the successors to the System/360 family. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path ...

OS/VS1 Operating System/Virtual Storage 1, or OS/VS1, is a discontinued IBM mainframe computer operating system designed to be run on IBM System/370 hardware. It was the successor to the Multiprogramming with a Fixed number of Tasks (MFT) option of Sys ...

& DOS/VSE Programming support The Kanji Keypunch was able to punch up to 2950 kinds of Kanji characters, using the left hand to select one of the 15 shift keys and the right hand to select one of the 240 Kanji characters for each shift. Until that time, only English alphanumeric and Japanese

half-width Katakana are katakana characters displayed compressed at half their normal width (a 1:2 aspect ratio), instead of the usual square (1:1) aspect ratio. For example, the usual (full-width) form of the katakana ''ka'' is カ while the half-width form is ｶ. ...

characters were processed on IBM mainframes. The IBM Kanji System thus established the basis for handling up to about 10,000 Japanese characters used in the daily life. The IBM Kanji System was further enhanced in September 1979 to include: Hardware * Offline input/output ** IBM 5924 T01 Kanji Keypunch (

IBM 029 A keypunch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards at specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator. Other devices included here for that same function include the gang punch, the pantograph punch, ...

Key Punch with 12-shift key Kanji keyboard) -

RPQ Request price quotation or RPQ is a long-standing IBM designation for a product or component that is potentially available, but that is not on the "standard" price list. Typical RPQ offerings are custom interfaces, hardware modifications, researc ...

* Online terminals ** IBM 3270 Subsystem *** IBM 3274 model 52C Control Unit with Kanji processing functions *** IBM 3278 model 52 Display (IBM 3278 Display with 12-shift key Kanji keyboard) *** IBM 3283 model 52 Inkjet Printer * Online printer **

IBM 3800 The IBM 3800 is a discontinued continuous forms laser printer designed and manufactured by IBM. It is significant as a product because it was both the first laser printer manufactured by IBM, and the first commercially available continuous forms la ...

-2 Printing Subsystem Kanji support software * Operating Systems **

** DOS/VSE ** IBM 8100 DPPX * Development Languages ** COBOL **

PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...

DBCS A double-byte character set (DBCS) is a character encoding in which either all characters (including control characters) are encoded in two bytes, or merely every graphic character not representable by an accompanying single-byte character set ...

support ** IMS **

CICS IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a family of mixed-language application servers that provide online transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE. CICS family products ...

* Utility programs The IBM Kanji System was planned, designed, and implemented mainly by Double-byte Technical Coordination Organization (DTCO) and development departments in IBM Fujisawa Laboratory, assisted by IBM Endicott Lab (IBM 029), Poughkeepsie Lab (OS/VS), Kingston Lab (IBM 3270), Santa Teresa Lab (IMS), Hursley Lab (CICS), Boeblingen Lab (DOS/VSE) and other locations as well as related vendors. These announcements were followed by other announcements: *

Kanji System, using

IBM 5250 IBM 5250 is a family of block-oriented terminals originally introduced with the IBM System/34 midrange computer systems in 1977. It also connects to the later System/36, System/38, and IBM AS/400 systems, and to IBM Power Systems systems runni ...

display (October, 1979) * IBM 3283-053 Kanji Printer (1981) * IBM 3200 Kanji Printer (1982) * IBM 3270 emulation and

emulation by the Japanese PCs: **

(1984) **

(1991)

Competition and cooperation

At the time of its development, Japan's major mainframe companies were developing their own Japanese processing systems independently and at the same time cooperating to establish a Japanese character code industry standard (

JIS X 0208 JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standards, Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. Th ...

). Some of these systems are: *

JEF Jef is a Dutch-language masculine given name primarily used in Belgium. It is a short form of Jozef/ Josef, used also in Breton. People with the name include: *Jef Billings (born 1945), American figure skating costume designer * Jef Boeke (born ...

(Japanese processing Extended Facility) by Fujitsu * JIPS (Japanese Information Processing System) by

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

KEIS Qays ʿAylān ( ar, قيس عيلان), often referred to simply as Qays (''Kais'' or ''Ḳays'') were an Arab tribal confederation that branched from the Mudar group. The tribe does not appear to have functioned as a unit in the pre-Islamic er ...

(Kanji processing Extended Information System) by Hitachi

Effect to the support of other languages

Similar supports later became available for

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

, and Chinese (both in

Traditional A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

and Simplified forms).

General

Competition and cooperation

Effect to the support of other languages

References

See also