Windows

Shift-JIS may not be displayed if the system locale is set to a language other than Japanese

📝 Various production-note

Published @2022-12-22 (Thursday) Updated @2022-12-22 (Thursday)

Author : Kota Shimizu

Table of Content

What is a system locale?

The Windows system locale is a setting that specifies the default language for programs that run with non-Unicode.

If you purchased Windows in Japan, this setting is usually set to Japanese (Japan).

When the system locale is set to other than Japanese

Unless there is a special case, it may not be necessary to change this setting. However, if the system locale is not English and English applications are used, you may need to change it.

In my case, I changed the system locale from Japanese (Japan) to English (United States) when using After Effects plug-ins called LottieFiles and Bodymovin, which export JSON files to run After Effects motion graphics as SVG animation on the web.

The reason is that the application had a problem when I used under Japanese (Japan).

Please see the following article regarding this issue.

How to solve the problem of gradients turning black and white using Lottie

How to change the system locale

To change the locale, follow these steps:

open the control panel
open Change date, time, or number formats under Clock and Region
go to Administrative tab and set the language in Languages for non-Unicode programs

Please also see the following images.

Setting panel for changing Windows system locale

Notes on changing system locale to other than Japanese

If you change the system locale to something other than Japanese, this time Japanese will not be displayed correctly in Japanese applications (applications that display in Shift-JIS).

I'm not sure if this is common in modern applications.

One more thing, when exporting CSV in Excel in Shift-JIS, it is not encoded correctly and the characters are corrupted.

When I import a Shift-JIS CSV into Excel in Shift-JIS, it is displayed correctly, but when I export the CSV from that Excel book in Shift-JIS, the characters are corrupted.

It seems that the encoding is probably not working properly.

Although you may not encounter this problem very often, if you find that corrupted characters occur when exporting CSV in Shift-JIS format from an Excel book, please check if the system locale is not Japanese.