Nowadays we see many keycaps with Japanese legends in the community, but I have yet to see a ‘proper’ Japanese keyset; including those in the international kit. Sure, it may have little demand, but it wouldn’t hurt to see one. Or maybe it’s just that it is not so discussed what a ‘proper’ Japanese keyset is.
So, what is a ‘proper’ Japanese keyset? In Japan there is this thing called JIS, short for Japanese industrial standard. According to a Japanese Wikipedia page, a JIS keyboard is a keyboard that complies with the JIS X 6002 layout.
https://www.jisc.go.jp/app/jis/general/GnrJISSearch.html(Look it up if you are interested, although it’s in Japanese)
It defines the alphas and kanas and all that but it’s not quite the keyboard as we know nowadays. The more modern looking keyboard was introduced in the late 80s by, guess who, IBM who created the legendary 5576 series.
IBM 5576-A01, the OADG reference keyboard
Later on as Microsoft Windows became a thing, two Windows keys and a menu key gets added and with a slight modification becomes the OADG 109A standard, the modern Japanese full-keyboard layout. It also gets a mention as a reference in JIS X 4064.
An example of a ‘proper’ Japanese key layout, complying with OADG 109A
One thing that people think to be weird about Japanese keyboards is how tiny the spacebar is. Like look at the previous example, it’s like only 2.5u! Well it actually does have some advantages such as having less rattle or wrap but that’s not the real reason it’s so short. Well, back in the days they did have Japanese spacebars that were longer. I mean Loooong.
A keyboard for the NEC PC-8800 series. This one has blue Alps too
It has katakana legends instead of hiragana legends which is something more classic but still it’s just the good old JIS in terms of the kana layout. But there was this one company, Fujitsu who ‘though different’ and made a complexly different kana layout for their OASYS Japanese input system, often called the thumb-shift which later became the NICOLA layout. As the name suggests, it uses only 3 rows of alphas instead of 4, by utilizing two ‘thumb’ keys for each hand.
Fujitsu FMT-KB205. A thumb-shift keyboard for their FM TOWNS computer. Features shift-left(シフト左), shift-right(シフト右) keys, and a somewhat awkwardly placed spacebar(空白)
Long story short, although it was a superior layout, sadly it never really caught on and is only used by some NICOLA fans nowadays. But now you see that if you remap mu-henkan(無変換) key to shift-left, henkan(変換) to shift-right, and the alphas to the corresponding kana, then you can use the NICOLA input method on a standard Japanese keyboard! How nice to have a short spacebar
Well... not really for most people, so what happened is,
Realforce first gen.
Realforce R2
It got longer again. Not only the Realforce. Some more examples below
Filco Majestouch 2
ARCHISS ProgresTouch Retro
These are the most common mechanical keyboard in the market right now (except for those flash gaming ones).
Versus some older ones.
Cherry G80-3600. Spacebar is positioned slightly off-centre.
Chicony KB-3920, a common membrane keyboard.
And for a little bonus a relatively new Fujitsu board.
Fujitsu FKB8540-551/G. Released in 2018. Features that good old tiny spacebar
So, the conclusion is... the bottom row is a total mess! There is NO such thing as a standard bottom row, and for the newer boards they don’t even have 109 keys. I see this as one of the greatest, if not the greatest obstacle to making a ‘proper’ Japanese keyset.
