How to display japanese Kanji inside a cmd window under windows?

If you find a font that will display the Kanji character set, you can add that font to the cmd Settings by adding values under this Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont\

Values:

Name: 00Data: Consolas

I've done this before but found this reference on SuperUser: https://superuser.com/q/55318

Hope this helps

How is your application writing output? The C byte-based stdio calls like printf won't support UTF-8 on Windows unless you have specifically set the console to use UTF-8 encoding by saying chcp 65001 && somecommand (and even then there are problems).

Without chcp, the console will be using the Windows installation's default code page, in this case cp1252, and writing in kanji will be impossible even if the console font you're using has glyphs for it.

If you want to write Unicode to the console reliably you would have to use character-based interfaces like wprintf.

This is how I can got Chinese input/output in cmd.exe running on Windows 7 Pro English Version.

1. Install console2, which is a front-end to cmd.exe (and other shells).

2. After installation, follow the instruction here

   • Delete key "Console2 command window" in registry

   • Import the following data into windows registry:

   • For Chinese(中文) Windows XP & Vista:

     Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\Console2 command window]"CodePage"=dword:000003a8"FontSize"=dword:000a0000"FontFamily"=dword:00000036"FontWeight"=dword:00000190"FaceName"="細明體""HistoryNoDup"=dword:00000000

   • For Japanese(日本語) Windows XP & Vista:

     Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\Console2 command window]"CodePage"=dword:000003a8"FontSize"=dword:000a0000"FontFamily"=dword:00000036"FontWeight"=dword:00000190"FaceName"="ＭＳ 明朝""HistoryNoDup"=dword:00000000

3. You may or may not have to change the font. Initially I had the font set to @NimSum, and the Chinese characters came out rotate 90 degrees. Then I switched to NimSum (without the @) and it came out correctly. Then just out of curiosity I switched to Consola and yet I can still see the Chinese Characters. So not sure if you actually have to set the font or not.