The Designest may receive compensation from companies, products, and services featured in this publication. For more details, please refer to our Affiliate Disclosure page.
Anime-like, traditional calligraphy, national language-based — an abundant choice of Japanese fonts for any project or occasion! Consider that you’ve found yourself at an online fonts fair, browsing for some high-quality goods you’re just destined to discover.
When you’ve sucked out all the inspiration from Japanese packaging design, feasted your eyes on Japanese branding and none of the other languages bring you joy, you’re mentally ready to immerse yourself into the diversity of Japanese fonts. You’ll find free and premium pieces, coming with their exclusive story and national language perks, hidden in each character, weight, alternate and glyph. Be sure to fall in love with the typographic manifestation of this culture through the fonts, ‘cause we already did!
Our Team’s Top Pick
Tokio Noir Font
Nothing’s going to hold back this Japanese font with a passionate Asian temper! If you’re crazy about calligraphic art, check out this reinvented Western writing using the Oriental styles. Asian pictorial emotionality meets European pragmatism. This distinguishing font is specially designed for vivid headers, logo/emblem designs, packaging, and more!
The Last Shuriken — Japanese Style Font
Konichiwa! The next item in this collection of fonts is The Last Shuriken, inspired by modern food branding and anime titles. This PUA encoded bold font is an all-caps typeface with bold strokes, designed for the most eye-catching graphics. It’s perfect for logos, posters, quotes, and games. The sans serif font is complete with stylistic alternates and multilingual support!
MurahMaksa Japanese Inspired Typeface
The list of the best Japanese fonts can’t be full without MurahMaksa! Its authentic vibe suits all design projects: product packaging, greeting cards, logos, modern titles, menus and magazines. Taking inspiration from Hiragana, the author of the font made it bold and simple. The type provides upper and lowercase letters, numbers, symbols, stylistic alternates and multilingual support. Designed with much love for Asian culture, this font will become one of your favorite tools!
UNGAI — Faux Japanese Font
Ungai, the faux Japanese font inherited the katakana style and took it to the fast-moving modern world we face today. Full of this philosophy, the typeface perfectly suits online games, posters, movie titles, menus, magazines, YouTube covers and thumbnails, social media page covers. This font is PUA encoded and easy to work with.
Tokyo Knights Font
Can samurais be referred to as Japanese knights? It’s a philosophical thought to process while working with Tokyo Knights typeface. This free asset doesn’t lack in variation: simple and italic versions included, as well as accented letters. Nobody forbids you from combining the Asian language with, let’s say, a Nordic one!
Hiro Misake Brush Japanese Font
Hiro Misake is one of the other fonts made with a brush in a traditional style made using a real brush pen. Just look at the size of strokes that are so natural in their little imperfections. It’s great for anything, that needs the Japanese brush font involved. The font designed for logos, menus, and other graphics. Try mixing it with more rounded types and see magic happening!
Osake — Japanese Font
Osake is a Japanese brush style font that was made with excellent taste. Each glyph is created as a copy of ethnic and cultural elements. This Japanese font is suitable for those of you who like the country culture or need help with Asian theme project. It can be a restaurant, clothing brand, and any sort of business. The Osake is perfect for any creative idea that comes to mind! The font comes in OTF, TTF and WOFF.
Kamikaze Font Family
Despite the incredibly sad meaning of the word “kamikaze”, it’s still in the public eye and used quite a lot in songs, movies and Japanese style fonts. This bold font family are based on awesome Darrell Flood’s “Japanese 3017” typeface and elaborated to represent its new form and style. Can you spot the peculiarities? Don’t even bother, just accept the font as magnificent as it is.
Kyoto — Japanese Display Typeface
The beauty of Japanese fonts is in their essence and spiritual character. If you’ve never been to Kyoto, this display font will take you a little bit closer to the feeling of your own Japanese adventure. Use it to decorate posters, notebooks, merch and just add it to your social media posts if you’ll eventually have a chance to visit this gorgeous country. The font comes in OTF, TTF and WOFF.
MOJITA Font
Mojita is a geometric display font, with a beautifully-balanced intricate design, not seen in other fonts. Inspired by Japanese Art Deco style, and Mayan pattern design. Completely uppercase, it houses 300 glyphs, and contains extended language support (120 Latin based languages). The font is designed to compete your poster designs, logos and signages.
Kimono — Japanese Display Typeface
The Kimono sans serif font looks incredibly neat in your themed text logos! Are you looking for bold and solid typefaces that have a Japanese traditional feeling? Try to download the Kimono font and you’ll get what you need and even more. The item is suitable for many occasions such as travel guides, movie titles, book covers, brand identity pieces, and personal projects!
Harukaze Font
Based on traditional Japanese fonts, Harukaze is a brush display font with a bold and powerful theme. Just one look at it triggers so many cultural associations, which means that the text would work as a great visual aid. Decide on the project style and let the inspiration flow! The font is designed to boost your inspiration and it copes with the task perfectly.
Yahiko Playful Handwritten Font
Minimalism is one more characteristic trait of Asian fonts and Yahiko, despite its playful modern mood, is not an exception. This handwritten font comes in OTF, TTF and WOFF and is perfect for branding projects, logotypes, book cover designs, social media posts, advertisements, and any sort of text.
Makuton Japanese Vintage Typeface
The traditional Asian culture is not a thing people can fully understand, as it’s so independent and conservative. Despite this, fonts like Makuton will be welcomed by anyone who loves aesthetics! This vintage style Japanese typeface inherited an air of traditional hieroglyphs and fits retro designs like logos, labels, badges, or posters. The font provides all standard characters, numbers, symbols and multilingual support.
Night in Tokyo Font Family
Even if these fonts didn’t have a name, people would grasp the meaning easily by looking at the sharpness of each stroke. Japanese style fonts like this one inspire for the adventures under cover of the night, running across the rooftops like in your favorite anime. These beautiful characters will transform any artwork into something magical and breath-taking!
Niagato — Japanese Display Font
What are top associations popping up in mind when speaking of Japan? Anime, ramen, and samurais? It’s time to create new ones, starting with delightful Japanese fonts. This one comprises a little bit of everything: kawaii styles, traditional strokes, and reserved, mysterious nature. The font comes in OTF and TTF and includes all standard letters, providing the designers the opportunity to type any text.
Yamatoshi Font
Yamatoshi is a handwritten script font inspired by Japanese culture. Suitable to energize your design with free spirit theme. Seems like it was written effortlessly that makes Yamatoshi stand out for its natural charm and astounding inky strokes and eye-catching curves that designers won’t be able to pass by! This rounded font was disigned to suit any concept.
Akihabored
Akihabored is a Japanese brush font with a handwriting style that comes in TTF, OTF and WOFF. It is a great addition to social media posts, greeting cards, editorial designs, labels and product packaging. The letter shapes were inspired by Hiragana and Kanji and due to that they have such an authentic look. Make your Japanese-themed designs shine with this brush font!
Kansei — Japanese Y2K Vibe Fonts
If you spent hours watching anime from 2000, Kansei is the Japanese font that has to be in your toolbox! This sans serif can easily become a part of various design projects, such as branding and logo designs, movies, and videos. Let the Hiragana-inspired letterforms of the all-caps type decorate your graphics!
Kong Japanese Font
No need to puzzle over Japanese-themed projects and search high and low for suitable tools, it’s here! Kong Japanese Font has it all: upper and lowercase letters, numerals and punctuation symbols to provide you with a pleasurable workflow — the type provides 328 glyphs in total. Create stylish magazines, bold captions, videos, logos and any other different designs with it. This one is surely one of the best Japanese fonts, so don’t miss it out!
Kattana Japanese Typeface
Tons of glyphs, stylistic alternates, upper and lowercase letters, numerals, symbols, multilingual support — this rounded Japanese font includes them all. It was created with much love and respect towards the culture and inspired by Katakana. The PUA encoded type looks stylish and modern and provides Open Type features. You can use the font for logos, cards and many other projects.
Sujoka Font
The stylish curves of this Japanese font will inspire many designers out there to try new concepts! Use it for logo designs, book and movie titles — only the sky is the limit. The font reminds of Hiragana, a type of syllabic writing in Japanese, so it will look authentic and eye-catching. Go ahead and be creative!
Hakubo — Japan Inspired Font
Hakubo is an awesome Japanese display font. It has excellent readability and will add a striking touch to any sort of design! Adorable characters carry multilingual letters, weight styles, ligatures, and alternates with them, promising that no design will be left unfinished. The cure rounded font comes in OTF, TTF, WOFF anf WOFF2.
KENJO FONTS | PT. II
Kenjo II typeface is delivered with Japanese and Art Deco influences. Completely uppercase, Kenjo II was made to become a focal point of your branding designs, logotype, packaging, or social media. Such a terse and sharp typeface enables powerful feelings hidden in each letter!
Onamura | Serif Experimental Font
Paying homage to predecessors, The Onamura font in a Japanese Ukiyo-e styles copy that influenced the fine arts movement in Europe. Rounded serif seems conventional combined with historically relevant letterform to create a harmonious blend. The font includes Open Type features and comes in OTF, TTF, WOFF and WOFF2. A real dream of any designer!
Arigatou Gozaimasu Font
Square robotic weight shapes reflect that part of Japanese culture, praised by numerous technological breakthroughs but preserving a sort of traditional lettering. This is a free downloadable item, including styled numerals, punctuation marks, and an immense amount of aesthetics!
CITYPOP — Japanese 90s Retro Fonts
A popular trend of musical culture, fashion, and lifestyle came from Japan back in the late 70s to 90s. Also known as Vaporwave, Future Funk, and Synthwave in the American music industry. This pack of 5 cool fonts was tailored to mimic the era mentioned above. Their versatility is a dream for every designer!
Japanese Brush
The turn has come for something conventional to step out to this selection of Japanese fonts. The brush-made handcrafted typeface looks like it has just been inscribed on a paper scroll. Use it for reserved and terse designs, logotypes, branding, and clothing designs. Maybe you can develop your own creative signature with this brush font?
OKAMI | Display Font
OKAMI is a modern font inspired by contemporary style, jaunty commercials and is most suited as a decorative display font. It has an uppercase display featuring a regular & outlined font with over 100 different glyph styles, isn’t it great? Adjust its size, play around with the additional elements, and you’ve got yourself one radiant font!
Japanese 2020 Font
If you look for a font that will help finish your Japanese-inspired designs, this one will catch your eye! It includes upper and lowercase letters, numerals, symbols and punctuation, so feel free to type any text you need. The Japanese font suits logo designs, posters, cards and many other artworks, so nothing will limit your artistic freedom!
Frequently Asked Questions
It’s hard to tell what are the best Japanese fonts, as there are so many of options! It would be better to use fonts like Yamatoshi font or Harukaze Font for some reserved, terse, traditional Japanese theme designs, while playful Yahiko and CITYPOP fonts would fit jolly projects. Also, for a more authentic feel you can go for a brush font. Check out all the typefaces we have included!
A Japanese style font is any typeface, using traditional Japanese calligraphy or katakana for its characters. These can be completely remastered or slightly adjusted in size or weight for the sake of a chosen design. Perfect examples of such fonts are Makuton, Ungai, and Harukaze.
