File Explorer Not Displaying Japanese Characters Properly (Win 10)

Question

Hello,

I am having a particular issue that in general seems to be pretty common but of which I have personally find no solution (no known solution that *works*). The issue I am having is that, particularly for folders/files that I download from the web using a browser, file explorer will not display Japanese characters properly in the file names. I have the Japanese language pack installed, I have non-unicode programs set to Japanese and locale set to Japan, but none-the-less File Explorer refuses to display Japanese characters in the filenames of files that I've downloaded. Instead, it replaces the characters with this: � (and occasionally other random characters, but mostly �). Incidentally, Notepad also refuses to display Japanese characters (does the same thing - replaces them with �) but Wordpad displays them just fine lol.

I have been struggling with this for a while and none of the solutions I've come across seem to resolve the issue. Any help regarding this is strongly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hey there!

I apologize your question took so long to try to get an answer to.

I had a similar issue when trying to use certain files for some projects.

Check to make sure you have Japanese set as your language for non-unicode programs

1. Open Control Panel
2. Go to "Clock and Region" and click "Region"
3. Go to the "Administrative" tab in the box that shows up
4. Press "Change System Locale" and select "Japanese (Japan)" from the drop-down menu.

Important thing here: make sure the box that says "Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" is UNCHECKED, this causes a heap of problems for programs and files that just cause them to appear strange or incorrectly. Upon unchecking this, the problems I was having with programs and files disappeared entirely, and I was able to use everything correctly again.