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Meiryo
Meiryo
Meiryo
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Meiryo
CategorySans-serif
DesignersC&G Inc., Eiichi Kōno, Takeharu Suzuki (Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji), Matthew Carter, Tom Rickner (Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic)
FoundryMicrosoft Typography
Date released2008
TrademarkMeiryo is either a registered trademark or a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

Meiryo (メイリオ, Meirio) is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font on Japanese systems beginning with Windows Vista.

Meiryo was created out of a growing need for legible CJK fonts compatible with Microsoft ClearType's hinting and subpixel rendering system. It was meant to increase the legibility of Japanese text on LCD screens, and would thus take the place of MS Gothic and MS Mincho, both of which had been widely used at the time. While most Latin fonts[citation needed] were able to use hinting at any size, most CJK fonts were incompatible with the technology[citation needed] (with the exception of some fonts such as Arial Unicode MS). Meiryo did away with embedding bitmap images into fonts for use at small sizes, a strategy employed by many CJK fonts (including MS Gothic and MS Mincho) to compensate for a lack of hinting support.

Meiryo UI

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Meiryo ( ) compared to Meiryo UI ( )

Meiryo UI is a version that uses condensed kana and reduced line height compared to Meiryo, introduced with Windows 7[1] and is also available as an update in Windows Vista.[2] Similar to MS UI Gothic, the Meiryo UI fonts are bundled with the same Meiryo TTC files of respective weights.

Characteristics

[edit]

Meiryo was designed as the enhanced version of Verdana, regarded as a highly readable font. The font's baseline was raised slightly to improve readability when mixing Latin and CJK texts. Meiryo glyphs for kanji and kana also have a height-to-width ratio of 95:100.

In previous Japanese fonts distributed with Windows, embedded bitmap glyphs are used whenever font size is set to around 9 points. Unlike previous fonts designed for CJK environments, Meiryo contains no embedded bitmaps. To improve readability under small font sizes without using embedded bitmaps, TrueType hinting language was used for stroke-reduction. A similar technology was used on MingLiU and PMingLiU versions 5.03.

Meiryo is developed to comply with JIS X 0213:2004 and can also use the newest set of personal name characters provided by the Japanese Minister of Justice. In addition, it contains OpenType tables for conversions between the old and new character forms (kyūjitai and shinjitai) introduced in the JIS78, JIS83, and JIS90 standards.[citation needed]

Meiryo supports the following OpenType layout features for Cyrillic, Greek, Han Ideographic, Kana, Latin scripts: nalt, afrc, dnom, dlig, frac, fwid, hwid, hkna, ital, jp78, jp83, jp90, numr, qwid, ruby, sinf, zero, smcp, c2sc, liga, sups, twid, vkna, vrt2, vert, kern.

Meiryo also contains glyphs not normally accessible without a font editor. These glyphs include circled 00, 51–100; negative circled 00, 21–100, a–z, A–Z, kana; (rounded) square-enclosed characters, negative (rounded) square-enclosed characters; 2x2 CJK words.

The italic version of Meiryo only provides italicized glyphs for the Latin alphabet as written Japanese has no concept of an italic font.

Availability

[edit]

For Microsoft Windows, Meiryo is distributed as two TrueType Collection files, with regular and bold glyphs stored in separate files. Each file also contains an italic variant of the font.

As stated earlier, the font has been included with all Windows versions since Vista.

For Windows XP, the font has become available free of charge by obtaining the Japanese version of Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition and electing to install the Microsoft Silverlight runtime. Downloading and installing the Japanese ClearType fonts for Windows XP from Microsoft also makes Meiryo available on Windows XP.

Meiryo is also distributed with Japanese version of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office 2013.

Authors

[edit]

The Japanese characters of Meiryo were designed by C&G Inc. and Eiichi Kōno, who also redesigned the Johnston font which is now used by London Underground as New Johnston. The Latin characters were designed by Matthew Carter, the British-born creator of the Verdana font, and are visibly similar to characters from Verdana. By having a font designed by a combination of Japanese and Latin font experts, Microsoft strived to create a font in which written English and Japanese could present themselves well together side by side on the screen. American Tom Rickner of Ascender Corporation did extensive programming and font hinting for Meiryo. Rickner helped create the first TrueType fonts at Apple and did all the font hinting for Microsoft's Georgia and Verdana fonts. According to Rickner, Meiryo is one of the first Japanese fonts created on and for the computer screen and took two years to create and engineer.

About the name

[edit]

The font name comes from the Japanese word meiryō (明瞭) [meːɾʲoː], which means "clarity", referring to ClearType making text written in Meiryo appear clearer on the screen. The Japanese spelling メイリオ is taken from the English pronunciation /ˈmeɪri.oʊ/; the actual Japanese spelling in katakana is メイリョウ.

According to Eiichi Kōno, the name was chosen for its exotic-sounding pronunciation and its compactness.[3]

Although it is a proportional font, the font name does not contain a 'P' to indicate this in Windows font lists, as with MS P Gothic (MS Pゴシック) and MS P Minchō (MS P明朝).

Problems

[edit]
  • At small sizes, dimensions of printed kanji characters are not even. However, small-size kanji rendering has been traditionally problematic involving trade-offs in legibility and other factors like spacing. That was fixed in Meiryo version 6 included with Windows 7.[4]
  • Sized between 11 and 13 points (96 dpi), glyphs have inconsistent stroke weight without the activation of ClearType. Sometimes, especially on the Mac OS X and Linux platforms, these problems can sometimes be avoided by displaying fonts in semi-bold or bold as their normal (lightest) font weight.
  • At small sizes, stroke reduction is not consistent with the methods used by other fonts such as MS Gothic.
  • Because of its compliance with Japanese Industrial Standard for encoding JIS X 0213:2004, variant characters have different stroke layouts from the ones used in older MS Gothic and other conventional fonts. To use older characters in a web page, for example, Meiryo needs to be activated manually.[5] (MingLiU and PMingLiU version 5.03 follow the standards set by Taiwan's Ministry of Education and the reference rendering used in Unicode documents, which also causes similar dissatisfaction among users.[6][7] On the other hand, MS Gothic, MS PGothic, MS UI Gothic, MS Mincho, MS PMincho can be updated to version 5.00, which include JIS X 0213:2004 support to match the characters used in Meiryo, and also incorporated JIS90 Forms OpenType Layout Table for users preferring the old glyphs.[8] For Vista users, Microsoft also offered an update to make MS Gothic and MS Mincho font families to use characters in JIS X 0208-1990.[9])
  • When italicized, only Latin characters are slanted, not CJK characters and kana. CJK characters use other methods of emphasis or quotation indication; thus differing from, for example, the typefaces of Romance languages (unrelated distinctions between cursive and non-cursive and other traditional writing styles do exist). Nowadays, however, italicization is used in advertising but usually combined with other, common forms of emphasis, such as bold weight, exclamation marks, and, in Japanese, katakana use. Academic texts, for example, do not use italicized CJK characters as opposed to those in non-CJK languages, e.g. in traditionally Latin-1 encoded European languages that use italics for things like inline quotations. Since these traditions of italicization do not exist in CJK, the decisions made for Meiryo is based on the existing general use. According to Microsoft, Meiryo uses a customized version of Verdana for italics instead of the generic slanting method.[10] Although the font includes an OpenType table for italics, this feature only substitutes characters already included in the font, instead of applying transformation effects to the affected characters. Since Meiryo only has italic characters for Latin, Greek, Coptic, and Cyrillic characters, it is an indication that Windows Vista does not use emulated italic effects if it uses a substitute font for italic effect but cannot find the correct glyph in the italic font. Similarly, most of the OpenType tables used in the font (except kern) only work if substitute glyphs are available inside the font.
  • Characters for triple and quadruple dash box-drawing characters all have six dashes. Furthermore, all horizontal dash box-drawing characters have three dashes when using OpenType's half-width features.

Awards

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Tokyo Type Directors club awarded 2007 Type design prize to Eiichi Kōno, C&G Inc (Satoru Akamoto, Takeharu Suzuki, Yukiko Ueda), and Matthew Carter for the Meiryo font.[11]

See also

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References

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Meiryo

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Meiryo (メイリオ) is a versatile modern typeface family developed by specifically for Japanese text, optimized to provide an exceptionally clean and readable appearance on digital screens as well as in print. It supports a comprehensive character set including , hiragana, , Latin letters, and symbols, making it suitable for seamless integration of Japanese and Roman scripts in user interfaces and documents. The development of Meiryo began in April 2002 as part of Microsoft's Font Collection initiative to improve on-screen for non-Latin languages, with full design work starting in 2003 and completing within 18 months by mid-2004. The project was led by Japanese type designer Eiichi Kono, who defined the extensive set exceeding 20,000 characters to cover modern Japanese usage, while handled the Latin components to ensure harmonious proportions with and . Additional contributions came from C&G Inc., including designers Satoru Sakamoto, Takeharu Suzuki, and Yukiko Ueda for outline production, with hinting provided by Agfa Monotype Corporation. The name "Meiryo," meaning "clear and bright" in Japanese, reflects its design goal of enhancing legibility through reduced stroke weights, tighter spacing, and optimizations for technologies like . Meiryo features four styles—regular, bold, italic, and bold italic—delivered in two font files (Meiryo.ttc and Meiryob.ttc), with variants like Meiryo UI tailored for applications. It incorporates advanced layout capabilities such as half-width and vertical forms for , small capitals, old-style figures, and ligatures, while supporting multiple scripts (e.g., Han, Latin, Cyrillic) and code pages for broad compatibility. The typeface's scalable outlines allow it to remain legible at small sizes for dense text and dynamic at larger scales for headings, addressing the challenges of rendering thousands of complex Japanese glyphs on low-resolution displays. Meiryo was first released in version 5.00 alongside on November 30, 2006, and has since been included in subsequent Windows versions (7 through 11) as well as applications. It received recognition for its innovation, including a 2007 Type Directors Club of award, and remains available exclusively through Microsoft products and services under a .

History

Background and Motivation

Prior to the release of , Windows relied on MS Gothic as the default Japanese font since , a monospace originally designed for low-resolution displays but which exhibited significant limitations on emerging LCD screens. These limitations included insufficient pixel density to render the intricate strokes of characters clearly at typical viewing sizes, leading to blurred edges and reduced legibility in digital interfaces, particularly when combined with the shift toward higher-resolution flat-panel monitors in the early 2000s. To address these challenges, Microsoft advanced its ClearType technology, introduced in 1998 and integrated into Windows XP, which utilized subpixel anti-aliasing to effectively triple the horizontal resolution on LCD panels. This innovation was particularly beneficial for East Asian languages, as it mitigated rendering artifacts in complex scripts like kanji, hiragana, and katakana by optimizing color subpixel positioning, thereby enhancing overall text sharpness and readability without requiring hardware changes. However, existing fonts like MS Gothic were not optimized for ClearType's subpixel rendering, necessitating the development of new typefaces tailored to these capabilities. The creation of Meiryo stemmed from Microsoft's collaboration with Japanese type foundries, including C&G Inc., to design a font that adhered to (JIS) for character clarity, especially in mixed Latin and CJK text environments. A key motivation was to improve readability at small point sizes of 9 to 12 points on screen, eliminating the need for embedded bitmaps by leveraging advanced hinting instructions to ensure scalable, high-fidelity outlines. This effort, advised by typographer Eiichi Kōno, aimed to support modern digital workflows, such as , where precise rendering across resolutions was essential.

Development Timeline

The development of Meiryo began in April 2002 as part of Microsoft's font collection initiative, with initial research focused on creating a Japanese optimized for . Full-scale development commenced in January 2003 under the direction of typographer Eiichi Kono, in collaboration with for Latin integration and C&G Inc. for overall design, spanning approximately 18 months marked by iterative testing to ensure compatibility with technology. This process involved creating over 20,000 glyphs for each of the regular and bold weights, with repeated evaluations of hinting and readability on screen displays. By mid-2004, the font family was completed, ready for integration into upcoming products. Meiryo made its initial public release bundled with (version 5.00), which launched for volume licensing customers on November 8, 2006, and reached general availability with the consumer edition on January 30, 2007, including the variant. In , the font was incorporated into for Mac as a standard installation component, enhancing Japanese text rendering in the suite. For legacy support, Meiryo became accessible on through Microsoft-provided updates, such as the Japanese ClearType fonts package (version 5.00) released in and development tools including the Japanese edition of Visual C# Express Edition. Subsequent versions of Meiryo have been included in all major Windows releases following Vista, with incremental updates primarily addressing minor hinting adjustments for improved on-screen clarity rather than fundamental redesigns. As of (updated through November 2025), the font is at version 6.50, maintaining its core structure while supporting enhanced display technologies.

Design

Characteristics

Meiryo is a gothic typeface designed for Japanese text, featuring a clean and modern aesthetic that emphasizes readability across digital and print media. Its Japanese glyphs, including and , adopt a rectangular proportion with a height-to-width of 95:100, which promotes even horizontal spacing and a in mixed-script layouts. This choice enhances the font's versatility for contemporary applications, such as user interfaces and documents, by avoiding the squarer forms typical of earlier Japanese fonts. The Latin portions of Meiryo draw inspiration from , incorporating a straightforward style with open letterforms that ensure legibility at small sizes while allowing dynamic scaling for larger displays. To facilitate seamless integration of Latin characters with CJK glyphs, the baseline for Japanese elements is raised by approximately 5% within their bounding boxes, aligning the optical centers and improving harmony in bilingual text. This adjustment addresses common alignment issues in mixed-language environments, contributing to Meiryo's reputation for exceptional on-screen clarity. Meiryo supports the full JIS X 0213:2004 character set, encompassing over 20,000 glyphs that include proportional and full-width variants for , hiragana, , as well as Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts. The generously open design of its letterforms supports scalable outline technology, optimized for rendering to maintain sharpness from 9-point UI text to headline sizes. This comprehensive coverage and stylistic uniformity make Meiryo suitable for professional in Japanese-centric contexts.

Technical Specifications

Meiryo is implemented in the outline format, utilizing scalable vector outlines without any embedded bitmaps to ensure high-quality rendering across various sizes and resolutions. It incorporates advanced hinting instructions, specifically optimized for through Microsoft's technology, which enhances legibility on LCD displays by aligning stems and counters precisely to pixel grids. The font supports a comprehensive set of features tailored for multilingual and vertical text handling, including proportional widths for Latin and Japanese characters, vertical writing modes for traditional East Asian layouts, and contextual ligatures for such as the iterated marks (e.g., tōten and kuten combinations). Character coverage encompasses over 20,000 glyphs in the regular weight, including full compliance with the JIS X 0213:2004 standard, which defines 11,233 characters including 10,050 across levels 1–4, additional personal name approved by the Japanese , and basic sets for Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts to support international text. In Windows environments, Meiryo is distributed as a Collection (TTC) file for efficient storage and loading, with primary files named Meiryo.ttc (containing regular and italic styles) and Meiryob.ttc (for bold and bold italic styles), allowing shared resources like outlines between weights. The design is particularly optimized for LCD screens at standard 96 DPI resolutions, with stroke weights fine-tuned to maintain consistent visual thickness and avoid over-thinning during hinting, ensuring clear readability in user interfaces and documents.

Variants

Standard Meiryo

Standard Meiryo is the core variant of the Meiryo font family, engineered as a proportional typeface for everyday use in documents and print media. It facilitates seamless integration of Japanese and Latin scripts, with design features that prioritize readability in word processing applications such as and portable document formats like PDFs, incorporating standard line heights and spacing to support efficient text layout without compromising . This variant draws from the family's overall emphasis on clean, open letterforms that remain dynamic across various sizes, ensuring versatility for professional and general publishing needs. The font family offers four primary weights in Standard Meiryo: Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic, each crafted to perform optimally at common document sizes of 10 to 14 points, where clarity is essential for prolonged reading. These weights maintain consistent proportions, allowing for balanced emphasis in mixed-language texts without disrupting flow. Standard Meiryo incorporates full-width glyphs for kana and kanji, aligning with conventions in traditional Japanese typesetting to ensure uniform visual rhythm and precise alignment in vertical or horizontal layouts. Its design emphasizes even stroke modulation across characters, promoting a modern gothic aesthetic that enhances sharpness on both screen and paper. Introduced with , Standard Meiryo replaced MS Gothic as the default font for non- applications on Japanese systems, providing a more contemporary alternative for system-wide document rendering.

Meiryo UI

Meiryo UI is a specialized variant of the Meiryo font family, designed specifically for elements in Windows, such as menus, dialogs, and the interface, where space constraints demand compact yet legible text rendering. This adaptation prioritizes fitting more content into limited areas without sacrificing readability on screens. Key design modifications include narrower kana characters and adjusted vertical spacing compared to the Standard Meiryo variant, enabling denser text placement in UI components like Windows Explorer and application interfaces. These changes facilitate better horizontal alignment and reduce overall footprint, making it suitable for environments with tight layout requirements. Visual comparisons highlight these differences, particularly in character width and interline spacing for Japanese text. Meiryo UI was introduced as an update for and in October 2009, available via , and became natively integrated in for Japanese-language systems. Meiryo UI served as the default font for Japanese UI text from through , supporting system interfaces and high-DPI displays. It remains included in later Windows versions, including and 11 as of November 2025, but was superseded as the default UI font by Yu Gothic UI starting in . Like the standard variant, Meiryo UI supports a comprehensive set of features for scripts including Hani, Hira, Latn, Cyrl, and Grek, ensuring compatibility with advanced in UI contexts. Its hinting is optimized for on-screen clarity at smaller sizes and in high-DPI environments, promoting sharp rendering in compact UI elements.

Availability and Licensing

In Microsoft Windows

Meiryo was introduced with in 2006 as the default font for Japanese text in Japanese-language editions, replacing the bitmap-based MS Gothic to improve legibility on LCD screens through optimization for subpixel rendering. The Meiryo UI variant, specifically designed for elements, featured narrower characters and adjusted spacing to enhance clarity in space-constrained areas like menus and dialogs. In Windows 7, released in 2009, Meiryo was retained as the primary Japanese font at version 6.05, with refinements to its metrics for better alignment with the system's Segoe UI proportions and overall rendering improvements on high-resolution displays. This update ensured consistent performance across system components, including title bars, buttons, and text in built-in applications such as Notepad. Support for Meiryo continued in Windows 10 (2015) and Windows 11 (2021), where it appears at version 6.50 and serves as a fallback or alternative for Japanese text rendering, though Yu Gothic UI assumed the default role for user interface elements in these versions. In non-Japanese editions, Meiryo can be installed optionally by adding the Japanese language pack through Settings > Time & Language > Language or by enabling the Japanese Supplemental Fonts feature under Settings > Apps > Optional features, making it available for use in system dialogs, menus, and apps like Notepad when Japanese text is present.

In Other Products and Platforms

Meiryo has been bundled with for Mac since the 2008 version and remains included in later editions, ensuring consistent Japanese text rendering across platforms. It continues to be available in subscriptions as of November 2025. In for Windows, Meiryo is provided as part of optional support packs in versions such as Office 2010 and 2013. For legacy systems, Meiryo was made available as a free download for Windows XP through Microsoft's Japanese ClearType fonts package, which improved on-screen rendering for Japanese text. Under Microsoft's End User License Agreement (EULA), Meiryo is free for personal and non-commercial use on licensed Windows installations, but commercial embedding in applications or documents requires adherence to specific embedding permissions, and redistribution of font files is prohibited without authorization. As of 2025, Meiryo is accessible for web designers via Adobe Fonts, offering licensed subsets optimized for Japanese typography in digital projects.

Creators

Japanese Designers

The Japanese glyphs in Meiryo, encompassing kanji, hiragana, and katakana, were primarily developed by the Tokyo-based studio C&G Inc., which Microsoft commissioned in 2002 to ensure high-fidelity digital rendering optimized for on-screen display under ClearType technology. C&G Inc. brought specialized expertise in bitmap and outline font production, leveraging automated tools to accelerate the creation of 20,680 glyphs per font file, totaling over 40,000 outlines across the regular and bold weights, while maintaining consistency across Japan's complex writing systems. Eiichi Kōno served as the lead typographic advisor and project coordinator for the Japanese components, drawing on his extensive background in gothic () typeface design to outline the and characters. As a veteran designer who had previously worked on high-profile projects like the New Johnston font for Underground, Kōno focused on refining stroke weights and proportions to enhance horizontal legibility, addressing pixel constraints in digital environments. His contributions emphasized precise structures, ensuring that intricate elements like radical components and variant forms adhered to traditional calligraphic principles adapted for modern clarity. Takeharu Suzuki, a senior type designer at C&G Inc., supported the effort by adapting an unfinished Japanese Gothic font base for horizontal typesetting, fine-tuning kerning and optical alignments to prevent distortions in mixed-script layouts common in Japanese text. Additional contributions came from C&G Inc. Managing Director Sakamoto and Senior Font Designer Yukiko Ueda, who assisted in outline production. This work was crucial for achieving balanced readability in mixed-script layouts. Collectively, the C&G team under Kōno's direction prioritized cultural accuracy by incorporating correct stroke orders and native speaker preferences for familiarity, resulting in a that felt intuitive and less fatiguing for prolonged reading on low-resolution screens. Their efforts complemented the Western design contributions, creating a unified bilingual .

Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic Designers

The Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic components of Meiryo were primarily designed by , a renowned British type designer known for his work on screen-optimized fonts such as . Carter contributed glyphs that emphasize openness and readability, drawing inspiration from Verdana's structure to ensure clarity in digital environments while adapting them to complement the Japanese elements of the typeface. Tom Rickner, a veteran font engineer and hinting specialist formerly with Monotype and Ascender Corporation, performed extensive hinting for Meiryo, including the Greek and Cyrillic extensions, ensuring precise rendering across these scripts, particularly for low-resolution displays using subpixel technology. To achieve seamless integration, the Western glyphs underwent adjustments to baselines, widths, and proportions—such as aligning the Latin to roughly match the Japanese portions—preventing any single script from dominating in mixed-language text. This harmonization relied on Carter's design vision and Rickner's engineering precision, promoting cross-script consistency essential for global applications like Windows and .

Name Origin

Etymology

The name "Meiryo" is derived from the Japanese word meiryō (明瞭), which translates to "clear" or "bright and clear." This term encapsulates the font's design philosophy, emphasizing sharp and readable text rendering. The word meiryō is composed of two kanji characters: 明 (mei), meaning "bright" or "clear," and 瞭 (ryō), meaning "distinct" or "understandable." Together, these characters convey a sense of and precision, aligning with the font's intended visual qualities. In , it is rendered as メイリオ (meirio) rather than the longer メイリョウ (meiryō), chosen for its exotic sound and brevity with one fewer character; the Romanized form "Meiryo" omits the long vowel mark for simplicity in English usage. The name was specifically chosen to highlight the font's enhanced on-screen clarity, particularly when paired with Microsoft's technology, which improves for smoother text display. This reflects the developers' focus on legibility in digital environments, making meiryō a fitting descriptor for the typeface's core attribute.

Significance

The name "Meiryo" symbolizes 's dedication to advancing clear and refined for Asian markets, particularly through its integration with the rendering technology that underpinned Windows Vista's visual redesign. By selecting a name derived from the Japanese word meiryō (明瞭), meaning "clear," highlighted the font's role in enhancing on-screen readability for complex CJK scripts, marking a strategic push toward global typographic standards. In Microsoft's promotional efforts, such as the 2004 Font Collection brochure, the name Meiryo was prominently featured to underscore improvements in legibility compared to earlier fonts like MS Mincho, positioning it as a cornerstone of better digital text experiences for Japanese users. This branding emphasized the font's and between Japanese and Latin characters, aligning with Vista's broader aesthetic refresh aimed at professional interfaces. Although Meiryo lacks an official logo, it is consistently stylized in as メイリオ within documentation and product releases to maintain cultural authenticity.

Issues and Improvements

Identified Problems

Upon its release with in 2007, Meiryo faced criticism for rendering inconsistencies, particularly in early versions before refinements in subsequent Windows updates. Users reported that characters exhibited uneven stroke weights, especially at sizes between 11 and 13 points on standard 96 dpi displays without enabled, leading to visual distortion where some strokes appeared overly bold or thin. This issue stemmed from incomplete optimization in the font's design, affecting readability on non-subpixel rendered screens. In mixed Latin and CJK text, inconsistent baseline alignment became evident at very small sizes under 9 points, causing characters to appear misaligned or shifted relative to one another, which disrupted the flow in documents combining English and Japanese elements. Early feedback highlighted examples like complex such as "真実" (truth) at around 10.5 points, where poor integration led to unintended visual discrepancies. These alignment problems were particularly noticeable in applications relying on default system rendering without advanced adjustments. Additionally, versions of Meiryo prior to suffered from jagged edges on non-LCD screens, attributed to limitations in the font's hinting , which failed to adequately adjust outlines for lower-resolution or non-subpixel displays. This resulted in crushed or unreadable appearances for certain characters, such as "謦" at small sizes, exacerbating distortion in environments without support. These defects were widely discussed in 2007-2008 user feedback on Japanese forums, including ITmedia, where designers acknowledged significant shortcuts in the initial refinement process, with only about 3,000 characters fully optimized despite covering 99% of typical usage.

Resolutions and Updates

In the Windows 7 release from 2009, Microsoft updated Meiryo to version 6.01, which enhanced kanji hinting to address stroke weight inconsistencies observed at small sizes (11-13 points at 96 DPI) without ClearType, resulting in more uniform glyph rendering. This iteration built on the font's original ClearType optimization, providing smoother subpixel rendering for Japanese characters across user interfaces and documents. For older systems, released optional updates to extend Meiryo compatibility to and Vista, including version 5.00 of the Meiryo collection in 2008, which integrated improved profiles for better Japanese text rendering in applications like Windows Presentation Foundation. These patches, available via , allowed users on legacy platforms to benefit from enhanced and reduced in non-Japanese-localized environments. The font was further updated to version 6.50 in Windows 10 version 2004 (May 2020 release), maintaining compatibility and supporting ongoing system improvements. Windows 10 and 11 include OS-level enhancements for high-DPI scaling and DirectWrite rendering, which improve legibility of fonts like Meiryo on high-resolution displays such as 4K monitors. For instance, a 2021 cumulative update (KB5007262) for Windows 11 specifically resolved glyph orientation problems in vertical text using Meiryo UI. While Meiryo has not undergone a full redesign, has applied updates through Windows servicing stacks, with version 6.50 current as of in 2025, without introducing major structural changes.

Recognition

Awards

In 2007, Meiryo received the Tokyo Type Directors Club (TDC) Type Design Prize, recognizing its innovative design as a CJK font developed for . The award was given to lead designer Eiichi Kōno, the C&G Inc. team (Satoru Sakamoto, Takeharu Suzuki, and Yukiko Ueda), type designer , and Corporation, highlighting the collaborative effort in creating a new standard font with enhanced on-screen legibility. The font was praised for its superior visibility and readability, particularly on large-format, high-resolution video displays, and for effectively blending Western and Asian typographic traditions in horizontal typesetting to meet the demands of modern digital communication. This recognition emphasized Meiryo's role in addressing the shift from paper-based to screen-based media, supporting diverse languages and cultures in applications ranging from books and business documents to . While Meiryo has not received other major awards, it has been featured in TDC annual exhibitions, underscoring its integration with technologies like ClearType for improved digital rendering. In the context of the 2007 competition, its emphasis on legibility in multilingual environments contributed to its selection.

Modern Usage and Impact

Meiryo is available in Windows 11 as part of the optional Japanese Supplemental Fonts package, supporting clear on-screen display for Japanese text and mixed Japanese and Latin content in applications and documents, alongside the default UI font Yu Gothic UI. Included as part of the Japanese supplemental fonts package, it maintains its role from earlier Windows versions despite the introduction of Yu Gothic UI for certain interface elements. Microsoft documentation highlights its optimization for digital environments, ensuring availability in Japanese Windows editions and via optional features, with significant prevalence in Japan. In , Meiryo is widely adopted in CSS font stacks for Japanese websites, where it provides a reliable fallback for due to its pre-installation on Windows systems. Developers often pair it with other system fonts like Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro on macOS and open-source alternatives such as Noto Sans JP to ensure consistent rendering across platforms, enhancing readability for bilingual content in , , and informational sites. This integration has contributed to its enduring presence in , where its clean lines and balanced proportions support responsive layouts without requiring additional downloads. Meiryo's design principles have influenced subsequent Microsoft typefaces, notably Yu Gothic UI, which succeeded it as the default UI font starting in and refines on-screen legibility for modern interfaces while preserving proportional harmony for Japanese characters. By prioritizing and reduced visual noise, Meiryo set a benchmark for fonts in digital ecosystems, paving the way for evolutions that address higher-resolution displays. Culturally, Meiryo has become a standard in Japanese digital applications, including software where its high legibility aids prolonged reading sessions and minimizes during language learning and text-heavy interfaces. Its adoption extends to public signage and informational displays in sectors like transportation, such as the Kōbe Electric Railway, where it facilitates clear communication in mixed-script environments. Overall, these applications underscore Meiryo's impact on everyday digital interactions in , promoting accessibility and comfort in an increasingly screen-dependent society.

References

  1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/meiryo
  2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/cleartype/pdfs/nowreadthis.pdf
  3. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/ms-gothic
  4. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/fonts-layout/font-support
  5. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/fonts/windows_11_font_list
  6. https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/meiryo
  7. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-add-packages--optional-components-reference?view=windows-11
  8. https://www.myfonts.com/collections/meiryo-font-microsoft-corporation
  9. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/the-meiryo-ui-font-is-available-for-windows-vista-and-for-windows-server-2008-1fa3f5e9-1046-a5ed-d809-c977e7ca30e4
  10. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/fonts/windows_7_font_list
  11. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/fonts/windows_10_font_list
  12. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-missing-fonts
  13. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/cleartype/clear-type-font-collection
  14. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/fonts/font-faq
  15. https://luc.devroye.org/fonts-43799.html
  16. https://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/2007/02/08/1623512.html
  17. https://jitenon.com/word/8405
  18. https://atmarkit.itmedia.co.jp/news/201001/07/meiryo.html
  19. https://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FMID=1761
  20. https://legacyupdate.net/download-center/download/10550/japanese-cleartype-fonts-for-windows-xp
  21. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/november-22-2021-kb5007262-os-build-22000-348-preview-7f3e18d7-4189-4882-b0e9-afc920253aee
  22. https://tokyotypedirectorsclub.org/en/award/2007_type/
  23. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14563064/japanese-standard-web-fonts
  24. https://gist.github.com/prantlf/fbd12acc69a022edd589dea48dafe3f8
  25. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/yu-gothic
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