Japanese OCR for PDF
Japanese OCR for scanned PDFs: the pages look the same, and the kanji, hiragana and katakana text becomes searchable and copyable.
Searchable Japanese scans
Invoices, contracts, manuals and school handouts scanned in Japan are often image-only PDFs: no search, no copy. This tool reads each page in your browser with PaddleOCR, trained on Japanese and Chinese characters and on English, and adds the text as an invisible layer, so you can find a company name, copy an amount or send a paragraph to a translator.
What works well
- Scanned invoices, estimates, delivery slips and contracts.
- Manuals, handouts and reports in horizontal Japanese.
- Lines mixing kanji and kana with numbers, ¥ amounts and English names.
- Not vertical writing (tategaki), as in novels and newspapers.
For the best results
- 1Scan at 300 DPI so kanji with many strokes stay sharp.
- 2Add English as a second language when the document has whole English passages.
- 3After OCR, PDF to Text gives you all the Japanese text at once.
Questions about Japanese OCR for PDF
How do I OCR a Japanese PDF?+
Choose the PDF, keep Japanese selected and click Make PDF searchable. Download the result and search or copy the text in any PDF reader.
Does it read vertical Japanese?+
Not yet. It reads horizontal lines, which covers most business documents, forms and manuals.
Does the PDF look different afterwards?+
No. The pages stay as they are; the text is added invisibly behind them.
Is my PDF uploaded?+
No. Recognition runs in your browser; the model downloads once (about 20 MB) and your PDF stays on your device.