Basis Technology's RJ (Read Japanese!) is a Windows® application that provides invaluable assistance in the reading of Japanese electronic text. It solves the three largest problems encountered in reading Japanese text: 1) character display, 2) kanji character identification, and 3) look-up of word meanings.

As anyone who has attempted to master written Japanese can attest, the largest impediment to understanding this most difficult of all languages is the identification of Kanji characters out of the thousands in daily use. Faced with a Japanese book or newspaper, the daunting task of analyzing these characters and looking them up in a "Kanji dictionary," even an automated one, is frustrating, discouraging, and, at best, excruciatingly slow. But this difficulty becomes an advantage in RJ, where a Kanji character in the computer's memory becomes a virtual signpost to a wealth of information about it. RJ turns the task of exploring the multitude of Kanji from a burden to a joy.

RJ is not an automatic translation system: it has no facility for translating sentences or inferring the meaning of large constructs. It is a translation aid, a tool for automating the two slowest and most frustrating tasks in comprehending a Japanese text - Kanji lookup and dictionary lookup. RJ requires a basic familiarity with the syntax, structures, and idioms of the Japanese language, which can only be acquired via study and experience and, optimally, time spent in Japan. But for those who have set out on the route of learning Japanese, or have acquired a working knowledge of the basic structure of the language through some other experience, RJ is an incomparably valuable and powerful tool for improving one's facility with that language, and virtually demolishes the otherwise awesome barrier between access to the written and spoken languages. For those who have some, non-expert familiarity with Japanese, but yet must deal with arbitrary Japanese texts on a regular basis, RJ is indispensable.