---
name: "mskanji"
section: "5"
platform: "freebsd"
package: "base"
version: "16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79"
release: "FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27)"
platforms: ["freebsd", "macos"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/mskanji"
---

# mskanji(5)

Shift-JIS (MS Kanji) encoding for Japanese text

## NAME

**mskanji** – Shift-JIS (MS Kanji) encoding for Japanese text

## SYNOPSIS

**ENCODING** "MSKanji"

## DESCRIPTION

Shift-JIS, also known as MS Kanji or SJIS, is an encoding system for Japanese characters, developed by Microsoft Corporation. It encodes the characters from the JIS X 0201 (ASCII/JIS-Roman) and JIS X 0208 (Japanese) character sets as sequences of either one or two bytes.

Characters from theASCII /JIS-Roman character set are encoded as single bytes between 0x00 and 0x7F (ASCII) or 0xA1 and 0xDF (Half-width katakana).

Characters from the JIS X 0208 character set are encoded as two bytes. The first ranges from 0x81 - 0x9F, 0xE0 - 0xEA, 0xED - 0xEE (not JIS:NEC- selected IBM extended characters), 0xF0 - 0xF9 (not JIS: user defined), or 0xFA - 0xFC (not JIS: IBM extended characters). The second byte ranges from 0x40 - 0xFC, excluding 0x7F (delete).

## SEE ALSO

[euc(5)](/euc/5.md), [utf8(5)](/utf8/5.md)