Japanese fonts display oddly compared to Chrome

Description of the issue:
On some websites, Japanese articles have a strange look to them as if some parts are using Japanese font but the kanji (chinese characters) are using a separate font.

The text looks fine in Chrome, but strange in Brave.

Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.
Go to a page that happens to have the affected issue such as a Japanese app on the Google Play store or an article on Inoreader.

Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
In Brave: https://imgur.com/eg3DKKl
In Chrome: https://imgur.com/PiqphGB

Expected result:
Brave should display Japanese fonts the same way that Chrome does, or at least the Japanese fonts should look consistent.

Reproduces how often:
Doesn’t happen on all Japanese sites. For now I have noticed articles on inoreader that are in Japanese and Google Play store Japanese app pages.

Brave Version(about:brave):
Version 0.59.34 Chromium: 72.0.3626.81 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Windows 10 version 1803

Reproducible on current live release (yes/no):
If live release means the latest stable, yes.

Additional Information:

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@jeshii,.
Apologies for the (very) delayed response. As such, we have had many browser updates since you initially posted this – can you confirm that you’ve updated to the latest release and whether or not the issue persists?

Mattches, thank you for getting back to me.

I am using the latest stable release on Windows 10 and I can confirm that there is a difference in how Japanese fonts are displayed on some (but not all?) websites with Japanese text.

A pretty big one is the Google Play website. When browsing Japanese apps, the kanji part of the font is unaliased compared to the hiragana/katakana parts. I just checked now and all the characters are antialiased in Google Chrome.

@BraveGem,
Hardware Acceleration has been known to cause strange and sometimes surprising effects on font/text (among other things). I don’t think that’s the case here but can you try disabling it and seeing if it makes any difference?
Settings --> Advanced --> System --> Hardware Acceleration

@Mattches

I tried your suggestion and loaded the site without hardware acceleration and I still experience the font problem. Please let me know what else I can do to help you discover the origin of the problem, thank you.

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@BraveGem,
Apologies for the late reply – would you mind running a quick test for us?
We’d just need you to download and install the stock version of Chromium and test the fonts there as well and let us know if they behave like they do in Brave or in Chrome.

@Mattches

Good idea!

I downloaded and installed portable Chromium Version (ungoogled) 75.0.3770.90 (Official Build) (64-bit). I am surprised to see that both Brave and Chromium display the Japanese font with uneven cleartype/antialiasing.

This whole time I thought this was an issue unique to Brave, but apparently not. The fonts display odd in Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi as well.

So the only browsers that display Japanese fonts on all sites correctly would be Firefox and Chrome on my home/work computers. Firefox doesn’t really count, but just thought I’d mention it.

I wonder what additions Google has added to Chrome to make this work?

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I know this post was 3 years ago but for people running into this problem like me just now:
Go to Brave setting > Language > Add a language > Choose Japanese
Everything should be ok then :slight_smile: