I like this article, though it is in Japanese so I'll do my best to summarize. Here's an answer in 2021 after my research and from my experience living and working in Japan. Also Hiragino Sans has far more font weights (10) than Kaku Gothic (only 2). Unless you want that "retro" feel, is highly recommended to use "Hiragino Sans" (not Kaku Gothic that's deprecated) for macOS and iOS devices for a consistent and modern look and better legibility. The proportional font is the sans-serif font, which is MS PGothic, serif font is MS PMing, and the monospace font is MS Gothic.īTW, the " Osaka" font was a standard font on Japanese Macs in the 90s. These are the default browser font settings for Firefox on my Japanese Windows machine: The " gothic" typeface fonts seem fairly popular these days: on Windows, fonts like MS Gothic, MS PGothic, etc. For example, .jp currently has this CSS: font-family: 'MS PGothic', Osaka, Arial, sans-serif If you want to use fonts that Japanese sites typically use I would start by browsing some of the more popular Japanese sites and using things like Firebug or the Chrome developer tools to examine the CSS and see what fonts they reference. But those fonts give a kind of Western look to Japanese characters.
I am no font/design expert, but just about every Japanese PC should have basic Latin fonts like the ones you mentioned installed, so they will work.
So the current recommended practice is like this, font-family:"ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3", "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro",Osaka, "メイリオ", Meiryo, "MS Pゴシック", "MS PGothic", sans-serif
Meiryo and Hiragino's order is, because Mac users may have Meiryo from MS-Office, and Hiragino is more familiar and matching well on Mac, better by starting Hiragino series. Some old browsers could not understand those font names in English, some others do not recognize the names in Japanese, so it is safe to write both in Japanese and English. For older versions such like Windows XP, it is good to add former default fonts MS Gothic(or MS Mincho)/Osaka. The latest ones are Meiryo and Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro. Most Japanese websites use default font sets provided on Windows or Mac. As a result of it, there are very few variations in Japanese fonts, and Japanese users also care about fonts less than Latin-character users.
Usually Japanese font has 8,000-16,000 glyph so making new fonts means you need to make at least 8,000 glyph, which is pretty heavy task. For more information visit this page.Web-font for Japanese, though there are few providers exist, is not really practical as you found the size of the font data is too big to download. This typeface is also available within Office applications. Products that supply this font Product name
License Microsoft fonts for enterprises, web developers, for hardware & software redistribution or server installations.Slng:'Cyrl', 'Grek', 'Hani', 'Hira', 'Hrkt', 'Jpan', 'Kana', 'Latn'ġ252 LaLatin 2: Eastern Europe 1251 Cyrillic 1253 Greek 1254 Turkish 1257 Windows Baltic 932 JIS/Japan OEM OEM Character Set 869 IBM Greek 866 MS-DOS Russian 865 MS-DOS Nordic 863 MS-DOS Canadian French 861 MS-DOS Icelandic 860 MS-DOS Portuguese 857 IBM Turkish 855 IBM Cyrillic primarily Russian 852 Latin 2 775 MS-DOS Baltic 737 Greek former 437 G 850 WE/Latin 1 437 US typeface:RYOBI IMAGIX CO.ĭlng:'Hani', 'Hira', 'Hrkt', 'Jpan', 'Kana' MS Gothic is a Japanese font features plain strokes similar to sans serif designs, and works well for on-screen display such as user interfaces.