Using Japanese in Quarto PDF Output

quarto
How to display Japanese correctly in Quarto by setting the CJKmainfont option.
Published

2026-02-03

Modified

2026-02-03

Note

Original Japanese version: QuartoのPDF出力で日本語を使う

When outputting PDFs with Quarto, Japanese may not be displayed correctly with the default settings. This is because the LaTeX settings do not support Japanese by default. This article introduces settings for using Japanese in Quarto.

Preparation for PDF Output

To output PDF, LaTeX needs to be installed. The officially recommended option is TinyTeX.

Install it by running the following command in a terminal.

Terminal
quarto install tinytex
NoteWhat Is LaTeX?

LaTeX is a typesetting system for creating high-quality documents. It is widely used especially for academic papers and technical documents. Although there are many commands to learn, you do not need a deep understanding of LaTeX just to output PDFs from Quarto.

Note

If you try to output a PDF when LaTeX is not installed, an error occurs. In that case, Quarto displays a message suggesting that you run quarto install tinytex to install TeX.

How to Output PDF

To output PDF with Quarto, specify format: pdf in the YAML header.

---
title: "Document Title"
format: pdf
---

With this setting, Quarto generates the document in PDF format. However, Japanese may not display correctly as-is.

Settings for Displaying Japanese Correctly

To display Japanese correctly, add the following setting to the YAML header.

---
title: "Document Title"
format:
  pdf:
    CJKmainfont: "BIZ UDPGothic"  # specify the Japanese font to use
---

For CJKmainfont, specify the name of a Japanese font installed on the system. Examples include "BIZ UDPGothic" and "Noto Sans CJK JP".

You can also specify mainfont: "Font Name", but in that case letters and numbers are also displayed with the specified font, so care is needed.

NoteAbout CJKmainfont

CJKmainfont is an option that specifies the font used to display Japanese in LaTeX. The letters C, J, and K stand for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. These languages contain many characters, so dedicated fonts are required.

NoteHow to Check Available Font Files

To check font files available to LaTeX, run the following command in a terminal.

Windows

Terminal
Get-ChildItem C:\Windows\Fonts | Select-Object Name

macOS/Linux

I have not confirmed this, but I think the following command can be used.

Terminal
ls /Library/Fonts/

References