IBM Kanji System
Encyclopedia
IBM Kanji System was announced in 1971 to support Japanese language
processing on the IBM System/360 computers. It was later enhanced by the support of IBM System/34, IBM 5550
and DOS/V
.
in Osaka, and official announcement was made in 1971, including:
The Kanji Keypunch was able to punch up to 2950 kinds of Kanji characters, using the left hand to select one of the 15 shift keys and the right hand to select one of the 240 Kanji characters for each shift. Until that time, only English alphanumeric and Japanese half-width Katakana
characters were processed on IBM mainframes, but now it established the basis for handling up to about 10,000 Japanese characters used in the daily life.
The IBM Kanji System was further enhanced in September, 1979, to include:
Hardware
Kanji support software
IBM Kanji System was planned, designed and implemented mainly by Double-Bite Technical Coordination Organization (DTCO) and development departments in IBM Fujisawa Laboratory
, assisted by IBM Endicott Lab (IBM 029), Poughkeepsie Lab (OS/VS), Kingston Lab (IBM 3270), Santa Teresa Lab (IMS), Hursley Lab (CICS), Boeblingen Lab (DOS/VSE) and other locations as well as related vendors.
These announcements were followed by other announcements:
companies were developing their own Japanese processing systems independently and at the same time cooperating together to establish a Japanese character code industry standard (JIS X 0208
). Some of these systems are:
, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese languages.
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
processing on the IBM System/360 computers. It was later enhanced by the support of IBM System/34, IBM 5550
IBM 5550
IBM 5550 is a personal computer series that IBM marketed in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China in the 1980s and 1990s, for business use customers. In Japan, its was introduced in 1983 and promoted as "Multistation 5550" because it had three roles in one machine: a PC, a word processing machine which...
and DOS/V
DOS/V
DOS/V was a Japanese computing initiative starting in 1990 to allow personal computers to handle double-byte Japanese text via software alone. It was developed by IBM for its PS/55 machines . Kanji fonts and other locale information were stored on the hard disk rather than on special chips as in...
.
General
IBM Kanji System became available in a series of staged announcements. Its initial technical demonstration was done at Expo '70Expo '70
was a World's Fair held in Suita, Osaka, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of the Expo was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese Expo '70 is often referred to as Ōsaka Banpaku...
in Osaka, and official announcement was made in 1971, including:
- IBM 2345 Kanji Printer
- IBM 029 Kanji Keypunch
- IBM System/360System/360The IBM System/360 was a mainframe computer system family first announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and sold between 1964 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific...
-System/370System/370The IBM System/370 was a model range of IBM mainframes announced on June 30, 1970 as the successors to the System/360 family. The series maintained backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path for customers; this, plus improved performance, were the dominant themes of the...
OS/VS1OS/VS1Operating System/Virtual Storage 1, or OS/VS1,was an IBM mainframe computer operating system designed to be run on IBM System/370 hardware....
& DOS/VSE Programming support
The Kanji Keypunch was able to punch up to 2950 kinds of Kanji characters, using the left hand to select one of the 15 shift keys and the right hand to select one of the 240 Kanji characters for each shift. Until that time, only English alphanumeric and Japanese half-width Katakana
Half-width kana
are katakana characters displayed at half their normal width , instead of the usual square aspect ratio. For example, the usual form of the katakana ka is カ while the half-width form is ｶ...
characters were processed on IBM mainframes, but now it established the basis for handling up to about 10,000 Japanese characters used in the daily life.
The IBM Kanji System was further enhanced in September, 1979, to include:
Hardware
- Offline input/output
- IBM 5924 T01 Kanji Keypunch (IBM 029 Key Punch with 12-shift key Kanji keyboad) - RPQ
- Online terminals
- IBM 3270IBM 3270The IBM 3270 is a class of block oriented terminals made by IBM since 1972 normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. As such, it was the successor to the IBM 2260 display terminal. Due to the text colour on the original models, these terminals are informally known as green screen terminals...
Subsystem- IBM 3274 model 52C Control Unit with Kanji processing functions
- IBM 3278 model 52 Display (IBM 3278 Display with 12-shift key Kanji keyboad)
- IBM 3273 model 52 Inkjet Printer
- IBM 3270
- Online printer
- IBM 3800-2 Printing Subsystem
Kanji support software
- Operating Systems
- OS/VS1OS/VS1Operating System/Virtual Storage 1, or OS/VS1,was an IBM mainframe computer operating system designed to be run on IBM System/370 hardware....
- DOS/VSE
- IBM 8100 DPPX
- OS/VS1
- Development Languages
- COBOLCOBOLCOBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....
- PL/IPL/IPL/I is a procedural, imperative computer programming language designed for scientific, engineering, business and systems programming applications...
- COBOL
- DBCSDBCSA double-byte character set is a character set that represents each character with 2 bytes. The DBCS supports national languages that contain a large number of unique characters or symbols...
support- IMSInformation Management SystemIBM Information Management System is a joint hierarchical database and information management system with extensive transaction processing capabilities.- History :...
- CICSCICSCustomer Information Control System is a transaction server that runs primarily on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE.CICS is a transaction manager designed for rapid, high-volume online processing. This processing is mostly interactive , but background transactions are possible...
- IMS
- Utility programs
IBM Kanji System was planned, designed and implemented mainly by Double-Bite Technical Coordination Organization (DTCO) and development departments in IBM Fujisawa Laboratory
IBM Yamato Facility
IBM Yamato Facility located in the city of Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, is where IBM's research and development activities are done for IBM's worldwide and Asia-Pacific region market. Its buildings were designed by the architecture firm of Nikken Sekkei Ltd. and completed in...
, assisted by IBM Endicott Lab (IBM 029), Poughkeepsie Lab (OS/VS), Kingston Lab (IBM 3270), Santa Teresa Lab (IMS), Hursley Lab (CICS), Boeblingen Lab (DOS/VSE) and other locations as well as related vendors.
These announcements were followed by other announcements:
- IBM System/34 Kanji System, using IBM 5250IBM 5250IBM 5250 was originally a family of terminal devices sold with the IBM System/34 minicomputer systems. One model was the IBM 5251-11. It also connected to the later System/36, System/38 and AS/400 systems.- Historical origins :...
display (October, 1979) - IBM 3273-053 Kanji Printer (1981)
- IBM 3200 Kanji Printer (1982)
- IBM 3270IBM 3270The IBM 3270 is a class of block oriented terminals made by IBM since 1972 normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. As such, it was the successor to the IBM 2260 display terminal. Due to the text colour on the original models, these terminals are informally known as green screen terminals...
emulation and IBM 5250IBM 5250IBM 5250 was originally a family of terminal devices sold with the IBM System/34 minicomputer systems. One model was the IBM 5251-11. It also connected to the later System/36, System/38 and AS/400 systems.- Historical origins :...
emulation by the Japanese PCs:- IBM 5550IBM 5550IBM 5550 is a personal computer series that IBM marketed in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China in the 1980s and 1990s, for business use customers. In Japan, its was introduced in 1983 and promoted as "Multistation 5550" because it had three roles in one machine: a PC, a word processing machine which...
(1984) - DOS/VDOS/VDOS/V was a Japanese computing initiative starting in 1990 to allow personal computers to handle double-byte Japanese text via software alone. It was developed by IBM for its PS/55 machines . Kanji fonts and other locale information were stored on the hard disk rather than on special chips as in...
(1991)
- IBM 5550
Competition and cooperation
At that time, Japan's major mainframeMainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
companies were developing their own Japanese processing systems independently and at the same time cooperating together to establish a Japanese character code industry standard (JIS X 0208
JIS X 0208
JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. The official title of the current standard is...
). Some of these systems are:
- JEFJEF codepageJEF is a stateful EBCDIC charset used in Fujitsu mainframe systems called FACOM and some OASYS series personal word processors. JEF is an acronym for "Japanese processing Extended Feature"...
(Japanese processing Extended Facility) by FujitsuFujitsuis a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues.... - JIPS (Japanese Information Processing System) by NECNEC, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
- KEISKEISKEIS is a stateful EBCDIC charset used in Hitachi mainframe systems. KEIS is an acronym for "Kanji processing Extended Information System".-Encoding structure:Here are the valid ranges of bytes according to its encoding structure.-References:...
(Kanji processing Extended Information System) by HitachiHitachiHitachi is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology.Hitachi may also refer to:*Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan*Hitachi province, former province of Japan*Prince Hitachi and Princess Hitachi, members of the Japanese imperial family...
Effect to the support of other languages
Similar supports became later available for KoreanKorean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese languages.
See also
- Japanese languageJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
- KanjiKanjiKanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
- DBCSDBCSA double-byte character set is a character set that represents each character with 2 bytes. The DBCS supports national languages that contain a large number of unique characters or symbols...
- CJK characters
- Other East Asian languages: KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese languages - List of IBM products