EUC-JP to UTF-8 - Japanese Unix Text Converter

Convert EUC-JP encoded Japanese text to UTF-8 in your browser. Essential for Unix/Linux server logs and legacy Japanese systems. No uploads, instant conversion.

Input (EUC-JP)

Drop file here or click to browse

TXT, LOG, CSV from Unix/Linux systems

Or paste text directly:

Output (UTF-8)

Windows-1257 to UTF-8 - Baltic Text Conv…

UTF8MB3 to UTF8MB4 - MySQL Full Unicode …

Universal Text Encoding Converter - 50+ …

CP437 to UTF-8 - DOS ANSI Art Text Conve…

Windows-1256 to UTF-8 - Arabic Text Conv…

View all Encoding translators →

Frequently Asked Questions

EUC-JP (Extended Unix Code for Japanese) is a character encoding system designed for Japanese text on Unix and Linux systems. It uses variable-length encoding (1-3 bytes per character) to represent ASCII characters, half-width katakana, and JIS X 0208 kanji characters. Developed in the 1980s, EUC-JP became the standard encoding for Japanese Unix systems and is still commonly found in server logs, email systems, and legacy applications.

While both encode Japanese text, EUC-JP and Shift-JIS were designed for different platforms. EUC-JP is Unix/Linux-native, maintains ASCII compatibility in the lower 128 bytes, and is safe for Unix tools that treat backslash (\) as a special character. Shift-JIS was designed for Windows and DOS, is more compact for typical Japanese text, but can create issues with path separators and command-line parsing. EUC-JP is preferred on servers; Shift-JIS is common on Windows desktops.

EUC-JP remains prevalent on Japanese Unix/Linux servers due to legacy infrastructure, system compatibility, and historical adoption. Many production systems, databases, email servers, and web applications were configured with EUC-JP decades ago and continue to use it. Changing system-wide encoding can break scripts, corrupt data, or require extensive testing. While new systems typically use UTF-8, existing EUC-JP systems are maintained for stability and backward compatibility.

Convert EUC-JP to UTF-8 when modernizing legacy systems, integrating Japanese Unix data with international platforms, processing server logs for analysis tools that expect UTF-8, migrating databases or applications to UTF-8, or preparing content for web publishing. UTF-8 is the universal standard for web content, modern applications, and data exchange, making conversion essential for interoperability and future-proofing.

JIS X 0208 is the Japanese Industrial Standard defining a set of 6,879 graphic characters including kanji (Chinese characters), hiragana, katakana, Roman letters, Greek letters, Cyrillic letters, and various symbols. This character set forms the foundation of EUC-JP encoding and was designed to cover common Japanese writing needs. It includes the most frequently used kanji but excludes many proper names and specialized characters, which were later added in extensions like JIS X 0212 and JIS X 0213.

This tool supports both file uploads and direct text pasting. You can upload text files encoded in EUC-JP (such as server logs, configuration files, or exported data) and the tool will decode them to UTF-8. Alternatively, paste EUC-JP text directly into the input area. File upload is useful for batch processing or large files, while text paste is convenient for quick snippets or clipboard content.

EUC-JP detection requires analyzing byte patterns. In EUC-JP, single bytes 0x00-0x7F represent ASCII, while Japanese characters use multi-byte sequences starting with bytes 0x8E or 0xA1-0xFE. If you see garbled characters when viewing Japanese text in UTF-8, it may be EUC-JP. Server logs from Japanese Unix systems often use EUC-JP. Tools like 'file' command on Unix (file -i filename) or 'nkf' (Network Kanji Filter) can detect encoding. When in doubt, try converting with this tool and check if the output displays correctly.

Common issues include encoding misdetection (text may be Shift-JIS or ISO-2022-JP instead), mojibake (garbled text) if the source isn't actually EUC-JP, loss of JIS X 0212 extended characters that aren't supported in standard EUC-JP, and line-ending differences between Unix (LF) and Windows (CRLF). The TextDecoder API handles standard EUC-JP well but may struggle with non-standard extensions or corrupted data. Always verify converted output and keep backups of original files.

Server logs from Japanese Unix/Linux systems (Apache, Nginx, syslog) often use EUC-JP encoding, especially on older installations. This tool decodes the EUC-JP byte sequences to UTF-8, making log entries readable in modern text editors and log analysis tools that expect UTF-8. The conversion preserves ASCII portions (timestamps, IP addresses) while properly decoding Japanese error messages, user names, or file paths.

This browser-based tool processes one file at a time. For batch processing multiple EUC-JP files, use the tool repeatedly or consider command-line tools like 'iconv' on Unix/Linux (iconv -f EUC-JP -t UTF-8 input.txt > output.txt) or scripting the conversion. This approach ensures privacy since all processing happens locally in your browser.

Related Tools