IBM History of Far Eastern Languages in computing, Part 2: Initial Efforts for Full Kanji Solutions, Early 1970s.

This article is the second part of a three-part series, presenting an overview of events in International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. that preceded today's versatility in handling Far Eastern languages in the information technology arena. In Part 2, the authors describe the intricacies of character encoding, processing, and printing involved in IBM's successful efforts to develop the first commercial general Kanji computer system. Later, during this time frame, the first commercial Kanji system was introduced. IBM was also launching development of the first computerized newspaper publishing system to offer Kanji capability. While IBM Japan marketed the available Katakana features in the early 1960s, Kurt Hensch was appointed development-engineering advisor to IBM Asia Pacific Headquarters in 1963. Realizing that the Katakana features previously made available in Japan were only primitive and temporary solutions, Hensch's first priority was seeking approaches that would facilitate data processing with unrestricted availability of Kanji, using newly evolving technology and software.