/morph

Japanese Typography Guide

Purpose: Use this reference when converting Japanese documents that require correct line breaking, fonts, page sizes, encoding, ruby, or vertical writing.

Contents

• Kinsoku basics
• Line heights and font sizes
• Fonts
• Pandoc and tool settings
• Page sizes and margins
• Quality checklist

Kinsoku Basics

Preserve Japanese readability:

• Do not leave prohibited punctuation at line start.
• Do not split inseparable character pairs or proper nouns mid-word.
• Use markdown+east_asian_line_breaks when line-breaking behavior matters.

Line Heights And Font Sizes

Fonts

Recommended families:

• Hiragino Mincho ProN
• Hiragino Sans
• Noto Serif CJK JP
• Noto Sans CJK JP

Rules:

• Keep document encoding as UTF-8.
• Choose fonts with full Japanese glyph coverage.

Pandoc And Tool Settings

# LuaLaTeX
pandoc input.md -o output.pdf \
  --pdf-engine=lualatex \
  -V mainfont="Hiragino Mincho ProN"

# XeLaTeX
pandoc input.md -o output.pdf \
  --pdf-engine=xelatex \
  -V mainfont="Hiragino Mincho ProN"

# wkhtmltopdf — DO NOT USE: archived/EOL since 2023, no security updates
# (see SKILL.md Critical Decision Rules). For HTML -> PDF use weasyprint
# or Chrome/Puppeteer instead.

For encoding repair:

iconv -f SHIFT_JIS -t UTF-8 input.md > input_utf8.md

Ruby And Vertical Writing

• Ruby is supported via HTML or Markdown extensions when the toolchain allows it.
• Vertical writing requires explicit LaTeX or CSS support and should be treated as a special-case configuration.

Common Page Sizes And Margins

Quality Checklist

• Kinsoku rules look acceptable
• Line height is 1.7-1.8 for body text
• Fonts are embedded and correct
• Page size is appropriate (A4 by default for business docs)
• Encoding is UTF-8