Shift-JIS to UTF-8 - Japanese Text Converter

Convert Shift-JIS encoded Japanese text to UTF-8 in your browser. Fixes mojibake from legacy Windows systems. Local processing, no uploads, instant results.

Input (Shift-JIS)

Drop Shift-JIS file here or click to browse

TXT, CSV, HTML from Japanese Windows

Or paste text directly:

Output (UTF-8)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Shift-JIS (Shift Japanese Industrial Standards) is a character encoding system for Japanese text developed in the 1980s. It combines single-byte ASCII characters with double-byte Japanese characters (kanji, hiragana, and katakana). Shift-JIS became the de facto standard for Japanese text on Windows systems and remains widely used in legacy applications, databases, and files from older Japanese systems.

UTF-8 has become the universal standard for web content and modern applications, supporting all languages in a single encoding. Converting Shift-JIS to UTF-8 is essential for displaying legacy Japanese content correctly in modern browsers, integrating with international systems, preventing mojibake (garbled text), and ensuring future compatibility as Shift-JIS support diminishes.

Mojibake (文字化け) means 'character transformation' and refers to garbled text that appears when text encoded in one character set is incorrectly interpreted as another. This commonly occurs when Shift-JIS files are opened as UTF-8 or vice versa. This tool prevents mojibake by correctly decoding Shift-JIS bytes using the proper encoding table before converting to UTF-8.

Use file upload when converting documents, CSV files, or text files saved with Shift-JIS encoding from legacy systems. This preserves the exact byte sequences. Use text paste when copying from applications that display correctly but need to be converted for web use or modern systems. File mode is more reliable for truly encoded Shift-JIS data.

Most modern browsers support Shift-JIS through the TextDecoder API, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. However, support quality varies. Chrome and Edge have the most reliable Shift-JIS decoding. If conversion fails or produces incorrect results, try a different browser or verify your source data is truly Shift-JIS encoded.

Yes, this tool processes files entirely in your browser, so file size is limited only by your browser's memory capacity. Most browsers can handle files up to several megabytes without issues. For very large files (>10MB), processing may take a few seconds.

Common issues include: source text that isn't actually Shift-JIS encoded (appears as garbage after conversion), files saved with CP932 (Windows-932) which has slight differences from standard Shift-JIS, half-width katakana characters displaying incorrectly, and invalid byte sequences in corrupted files.

Shift-JIS is the original standard, while CP932 (Code Page 932) and Windows-31J are Microsoft extensions used in Windows. They add characters in undefined regions of Shift-JIS, including extended kanji, symbols, and NEC special characters. Most modern decoders, including this tool, handle these variants interchangeably.

Completely. All conversion happens locally in your browser using JavaScript. Your Japanese text never leaves your device or gets uploaded to any server.

Currently, this tool processes one file at a time. For batch processing multiple Shift-JIS files, you can use command-line tools like 'iconv' on Linux/Mac or PowerShell's encoding conversion cmdlets on Windows.

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