Convert Shift_JIS and EUC-JP files to UTF-8

When you need this

• CSV exports from Japanese banks, government portals or accounting software that you open on a Mac, in Google Sheets or in a UTF-8-only system.
• Files saved as “ANSI” in Notepad on a Japanese Windows, read by an editor or a program that expects UTF-8 – pandas and PowerShell included.
• Old websites, email archives and server logs from Unix systems, which were usually EUC-JP.
• Downloaded subtitles for anime and films (.srt, .ass) in Shift_JIS that show garbage on a TV or in a player – see fix subtitle encoding.

ƒtƒ@ƒCƒ‹‚ð•ÏŠ·‚µ‚Ü‚µ‚½ “Œ‹ž

ファイルを変換しました 東京

How to convert

1. Drag the file into the box above or choose it – CSV, TXT, SRT, JSON and other text formats work.
2. Mojibuster reads the file as Shift_JIS (CP932), EUC-JP, ISO-2022-JP and UTF-8 and keeps the reading that produces real Japanese. The result shows which code page it used.
3. Wrong guess? Click Read as … in the result to re-read the file in another code page.
4. Click Download to save the UTF-8 file. For CSV files keep Save with BOM on so Excel opens them correctly.

How to recognize Shift_JIS at a glance

• 東 is 93 8C in Shift_JIS and shows as “Œ in a Western program; 京 is 8B 9E and shows as ‹ž.
• Katakana start with 83: ファイル is 83 74 83 40 83 43 83 8B and shows as ƒtƒ@ƒCƒ‹ – the ƒ every other character is the giveaway.
• EUC-JP looks different: 東京 is C5 EC B5 FE and shows as ÅìµÞ.

The bytes are all still there in these cases, so the file converts without loss. Text like 縺薙ｓ縺ｫ縺｡縺ｯ is the opposite problem: UTF-8 that was read as Shift_JIS and saved. Paste it into the box and Mojibuster turns it back into こんにちは – see what mojibake is.

Shift_JIS and CP932

What Windows calls Shift_JIS is strictly CP932 (Windows-31J): Shift_JIS plus circled numbers like ①, symbols like ㈱ and a number of variant kanji. Mojibuster reads with CP932, so these characters convert correctly too. ISO-2022-JP, the old email encoding with escape sequences, is detected as well.

Converting on the command line

For many files or a script: iconv -f CP932 -t UTF-8 in.txt > out.txt on Linux, macOS and Git Bash (-f EUC-JP for Unix files). In PowerShell 7: Get-Content in.txt -Encoding 932 | Set-Content out.txt -Encoding utf8. These commands don’t guess the code page; pick the wrong one and you get new garbage. Mojibuster checks the options for you.

What can’t be restored

Characters that have already become ? are gone: the information was lost when the file was saved. Mojibuster shows how many such spots the file contains; why they appear is explained under question marks instead of characters. Files from China or Korea use other code pages – see the converters for GBK, Big5 and EUC-KR.

Frequently asked questions

More guides

• Mojibake fixer for all kinds of text Repair garbled characters in text and files.
• Fix CSV encoding Repair special characters in CSV exports and save as UTF-8.
• Excel characters When Excel shows é instead of é after opening a CSV.
• Fix UTF-8 Remove mojibake from databases, emails and websites.
• Fix subtitles Repair SRT and VTT subtitles with broken characters.
• What is mojibake? Meaning, origin and causes of garbled text.
• Double-encoded When é first became é and then é.
• é instead of é Table of é, ñ, ü and more – and what’s behind them.
• Apostrophes & quotes ’, “, – and … instead of apostrophes, quotes and dashes.
• ANSI → UTF-8 Convert old ANSI files to UTF-8 without losing accented characters.
• Question marks instead of characters ? or � instead of letters – what can be rescued and what can’t.
• ‚Äô instead of ’ Mojibake from a Mac: ’, é – and é from the Windows console.
• URL-encoded characters %C3%A9 instead of é – make percent codes from links and forms readable.
• WordPress & database Repair SQL dumps and WordPress content showing é instead of é.
• MySQL & phpMyAdmin Set the charset of table, connection and import correctly.
• Outlook Fix broken characters in e-mails and contact exports.
• PowerShell -Encoding, console and script files in PowerShell 5.1 and 7.
• Python & pandas encoding in read_csv, to_csv, open() and requests.
• Notepad++ Choose or convert the encoding – the crucial difference.
• Customer data & CRM Repair customer lists from CRM and ERP without uploading them.
• EUC-KR → UTF-8 Convert EUC-KR and CP949 files from Korea to UTF-8.
• GBK → UTF-8 Convert GBK, GB2312 and GB18030 files from mainland China to UTF-8.
• Big5 → UTF-8 Convert Big5 (CP950, HKSCS) files from Taiwan or Hong Kong to UTF-8.
• Windows-1251 → UTF-8 Convert old Russian files (cp1251, KOI8-R, CP866) to UTF-8.
• Windows-1256 to UTF-8 Converts old Arabic files (cp1256, Arabic ANSI) to UTF-8.
• Windows-1253 to UTF-8 Converts old Greek files (cp1253, ISO-8859-7) to UTF-8.
• Windows-1255 to UTF-8 Converts old Hebrew files (cp1255, ISO-8859-8) to UTF-8.
• Windows-1250 → UTF-8 Converts old Polish and Central European files to UTF-8.
• Big5, GBK, Shift_JIS → UTF-8 Convert old Chinese, Japanese and Korean files to UTF-8.
• Hindi, Tamil, Bengali text Hindi, Tamil or Bengali text shows à¤, à® or à¦? Repair it here.
• Kruti Dev to Unicode Hindi typed in Kruti Dev shows up as fgUnh? Convert it to Unicode.
• Preeti to Unicode Nepali typed in Preeti shows up as g]kfn? Convert it to Unicode.
• Bijoy to Unicode Bengali typed in Bijoy shows up as evsjv? Convert it to Unicode.
• For businesses & data protection officers How Mojibuster protects data – and how to verify it yourself.