Japanese Font Generator
Every font here is open-licensed (SIL OFL). The images you download are yours to use, commercially included. Rendering happens in your browser.
Type any Japanese text above — kanji, hiragana, or katakana — and see it rendered in eight Japanese typefaces, from formal brush calligraphy to felt-tip marker. Each one downloads as a transparent PNG at print resolution, horizontal or vertical. Every font is open-licensed, so what you make here can be used commercially without asking anyone.
The styles, and when to use them
| Style | What it says | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Brush — formal | Disciplined, dignified, close to textbook calligraphy | Names, martial-arts themes, formal gifts |
| Brush — bold ink | Power, impact, visible ink texture | Posters, storefronts, statement pieces |
| Brush — flowing | Elegance, motion, a hint of cursive | Poetry, feminine designs, art prints |
| Classic serif | Printed authority, tradition | Documents, labels, editorial design |
| Pen — handwriting | Personal, sincere, studious | Letters, journals, gentle branding |
| Marker | Casual, loud, friendly | Menus, pop displays, playful designs |
A rule of thumb from the Japanese side: the more formal the occasion, the more disciplined the stroke. A name on a gift looks right in formal brush; the same name in marker style reads like a lunch menu. Style carries meaning here just as much as the characters do.
Vertical text is not just rotated text
Japanese is traditionally written top to bottom, right to left — and several characters change form when the writing turns vertical. The long-vowel mark ー stands upright, brackets rotate, punctuation shifts position. Our vertical mode handles this; simply rotating a horizontal image 90 degrees does not, and the result reads as obviously wrong to anyone who knows Japanese.
Vertical is the natural choice for narrow formats: scrolls, banners, spine text, and most tattoo placements on the arm or back.
About the licenses — read this if you sell your designs
Every typeface on this page is released under the SIL Open Font License. In practice that means: the images you generate are yours, including for commercial products — shirts, prints, logos, client work. You do not need to credit anyone (though the type designers deserve it). The one thing the license forbids is selling the font files themselves, which this tool never gives you anyway.
This is rarer than it sounds. Most "free" Japanese font sites mix in fonts that prohibit commercial use, and the license page is in Japanese. We chose these eight specifically so that nothing here can burn you later.
Before you commit to the text itself
A beautiful rendering of the wrong characters is still the wrong characters. If the text came from a machine translation — or from a converter that never explained its choices — check the meaning before you print, engrave, or tattoo it. How we choose kanji explains what to look for, and we will check a short text for free.
Related tools
- Need your name in Japanese first? Start with the English to katakana converter, then bring the result here.
- Not sure how a Japanese text is read? The kanji to hiragana and kanji to romaji converters will tell you.
FAQ
Can I use these images on products I sell?
Yes. All eight fonts are SIL OFL licensed — the rendered images are free to use commercially. See the license section above for the one thing you can't do (resell the font files themselves).
Why does a new style take a moment to appear?
Fonts load on demand, subset to exactly the characters you typed — a few kilobytes instead of several megabytes. The first render of a new text fetches those subsets; after that it is instant.
Is this real calligraphy?
No — these are typefaces designed in calligraphic styles. Real shodō is written by a human hand and no two strokes are identical. For most design work a good brush font is exactly right; for something meant to be one of a kind, commission a calligrapher.