IssueTracker

Google even has a DroidSansJapanese.ttf font in their Android Git repository, and this appears to be included on Android devices in the Japan domestic market.  Why international Android devices do not include this font boggles the mind.

This issue *must* be fixed. It is turning Japanese-using people off Android platforms.
Jim Breen

Hello. I'm too really annoyed with this bug. It makes impossible to study Japanese with Android, as some kanji are really different. Some applications (Obenkyou for example) allows to change the font, but most applications or webpages doesn't render correctly.

I'm using Android 4.0.2 in the Samsung Galaxy and it's still there.

Please, fix this issue in the next releases. Thank you.

I've just updated to Android 4.0.4 and the problem is still present :(

It doesn't look as if anybody at Android Development Team is interested in this issue.

This is a very frustrating issue. I'm studying Japanese and if this isn't fixed I won't be getting another Android phone.

Thanks for the tip about Obenkyo, ncc1701.

Yes this is really annoying, I don't want to root my phone to fix this.

Please! Something has to be done, I can't belive this hasn't been fixed.

I'm looking for mobile device for learning Japanese. I think of Android devices but I'm not going to buy one util this issue is solved.

The new Jellybean release (Android 4.1) makes some improvements, but it is far from complete.

From the developers: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly-bean.html

"Better glyph support for Japanese users (renders Japanese-specific versions of glyphs when system language is set to Japanese)".

So it seems that the new release will display correctly the kanji if the phone is configured set to Japanese, but not otherwise.

For me, it is very hard to understand that this problem is not yet solved, nor even acknowledged by Google :(

It's a step in the right direction, but it should be locale-based; not just based on system language. I guess just having Japanese rendering available will mean developers can probably use it.

please do something about this issue. I signaled it a couple of years ago in an anki software related forum. It's driving me nuts, having software like anki or aedict display the wrong characters.
I'm working on remembering all jôyô kanji and getting confused so often lately, not being sure if it's my memory failing me or the darn android character display issue.

I was in Japan this summer and all the people around me had android phones, with correct fonts of course, and it's just so strange having to explain that non japanese android phones can't display Japanese properly.

I also don't want to root my phone to fix this. Please do something (like use the same Japanese standard font used in Japanese android phones...)

b

I have to throw my voice in with the others here. I managed to root and update the font on my phone to display Japanese correctly, but on my new Toshiba tablet that has not been rooted and has a locked bootloader it is looking more and more like this will never be an option. It's somewhat ridiculous to me that this issue has existed for so long without so much as an acknowledgement that it will eventually be fixed.

I see this issue is still classified as "New" (after nearly 14 months!) That means "The bug report has not yet been triaged (that is, reviewed by an AOSP contributor.)"
(see http://source.android.com/source/life-of-a-bug.html)
Also it's rated as "Priority-Medium".

How on earth do we get it triaged?  Will it just stay bleeding in the hospital corridor.

Same thing here, I am learning Japanese in Tokyo and have been using Anki, Aedict, and JED for about a month, only to find out today that I was learning the wrong kanjis (the Chinese/Korean versions according to my teacher).
None of my classmates using iPhones have this issue, I wonder why Android should be different...

Please please please fix this!

the ankidroid issue can be fixed, but not the others.

 To get anki to display correct kanji, you need to download the Droid Sans
Japanese font, then edit your anki deck on the computer to set all the font
fields in the card layout (deck properties) to Droid Sans Japanese
you then need to copy paste the Droid Sans Japanese in a font folder in
ankidroid (you'll need to create it if it's not there), and then activate
the "use custom font" option in the ankidroid options, where you'll see the
Droid Sans Japanese font. It works fine. Only issue I had was getting the
font's name right, in my compter anki decks the font is listed as Droid
Sans Japanese ,  with the spaces.
Doing this, Ankidroid cards will display the correct kanji, but the rest of
your android japanese display will still be inaccurate.
Hope this is fixed some day, it's ridiculous.

ben

The new Android version, 4.2, has been announced. Among the improvements, there are new Korean fonts and some unspecified improvements about internationalization. Let's hope this issue has been fixed.

I have Android 4.2 on both my Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 and sadly both are incorrectly displaying non-Japanese characters in the han unification Wikipedia link provided above.  How can an issue like this still not be resolved yet???

I won't be purchasing another Android product until this is resolved. Apple has had proper Japanese display forever. Why can't Android?

I recently acquired a Nexus 7 tablet, running 4.2. It has Japanese fonts, and displays them properly (as far as I can tell) if the interface language is set to Japanese.

But when the interface language is set to English, by default kanji are displayed as the Chinese versions.

However, if you're willing to root your device, it seems to be easy to change this default:
+ root the device
+ remount /system read-write
+ save a copy of /system/etc/fallback_fonts.xml
+ edit /system/etc/fallback_fonts.xml, moving the lines

    <family>
        <fileset>
            <file lang="ja">MTLmr3m.ttf</file>
        </fileset>
    </family>

to the beginning of the list, right after <familyset>. (I also took out 'lang="ja"')

+ Reboot the device in order for the changes to take effect.

And if you don't understand those instructions, find someone who uses Linux to help you.

Given that jellybean features such a gorgeous Japanese font built in, this is a deeply frustrating problem with such an easy potential fix. If it's too much to ask Android to distinguish hanzi from kanji, at the very least give us a simple switch to  choose whether Chinese characters are displayed as kanji or displayed as hanzi. I'm fed up of changing the language of my entire system just to read Japanese text properly. No other OS I've ever used has suffered from this.

I find Android's silence on this matter disturbing. Do they not investigate what users really need? The fix in jellybean is really half-baked. As an open-source devotee, I'd like to recommend Android devices, but instead I have to alert people wanting to use Japanese that there is a major problem that Android is simply ignoring.

Can't believe this issue is still "new" and it's been over 1 year since it was first reported.
Seems really easy to fix ...

Android 4.3 on Nexus 4, STILL not fixed.
On my old rooted HTC Desire S, I just installed a font with the name DroidSansJapanese.ttf. Please just include this font on the next version, that's all that's needed!

I have updated as well on Nexus 7.
If I use it in Japanese, it renders correct character, however not when i set the language to English.

I found a program called MoreLocale that will let you change easily to different regions.  That said, I think people here are making way too big a deal out of the font issue.  It would be nice if it were perfect but there are always slight differences between fonts even on PC.  I don't have any problem reading the android fonts even with the few strange variants it uses.

MoreLocale and MoreLocale2 are good for flipping the entire locale - menus, error messages, etc. It doesn't let you select which Asian glyphs you see when you are working in an English locale.

We are certainly not "making way too big a deal out of the font issue". This is a very important issue which works properly on all Apple devices, Windows, Linux, etc. It's just broken in Android. I am involved in Japanese language education, and we simply can't use Android if it consistently shows the Chinese version of key characters when you are running in a non-Japanese locale. Changing to a Japanese locale is not a solution.

This issue first came to my attention in a Japanese learning community and it's a problem that has been brought up more than once. Android potentially loses out to IOS as a recommended platform for language learning. There are similar issues with other languages.

Please ask other people to star this issue and help get it noticed by Google.

Right now it is still in a 'new' status, so no one from Google is looking into it. We need to bring it to their attention and the only way I can see this happening is more stars!!

[Comment deleted]

With japanese language set it displays properly but otherwise it uses chinese han format.

Seriously, how can we escalate it? A "project member" visited this issue in June, and I have emailed him/her. Any other ideas? If I had the energy I'd write an article and see if any of the newsy sites want to run with it.

I had to stop using Android to learn Japanese, and use only my desktop computer (by the way, using Firefox because Chrome on Windows has exactly the same issue, I don't think it is unrelated). Some developers have the option to change the font (like Obenkyo) but it is of very limited use.

I don't know how it can be escalated. Clearly, we need to be more noisy, and to have this post more starred. Maybe, Jim Breen, you could add a note in WWWJDIC announcing this issue and a link to star this post :) Publishing it on Slashdot would be great, but I don't think it is relevant enough for them to approve it.

There is some info about the Han Unification in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification

Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_language_dependent_characters are some examples of unified characters. Android is clearly using the Chinese variant. It is very possible that fixing the font for Japanese will break Chinese glyphs. I'm not an expert of Unicode and related encoding systems, but clearly some other platforms will show Japanese correctly (may be they have problems mixing Japanese and Chinese in the same page).

It's usually done with locale settings, and on most platforms you can say that for a particular locale (e.g. English) I want such-and-such a set of fonts used (and I specify ones that look Japanese.) That's what I've done with Linux. I can have several different locales associated with apps, etc. The problem with Android is they seem to have only a single system-wide locale, and the font is locked to it.

For me a simple solution would be to let me install or invoke an alternative system font. I frankly don't look at Chinese text enough for it to bother me.

It's a huge problem.

I was flabbergasted when I realised that it happened.

Imagine if in Korea all English text wÄ& R€πd€я€d l׀Ҝ€ ŦĦ׀s

A lot of people know about the issue, probably don't know about this thread.

We need to spread the word. Some posts in places like http://forum.koohii.com/ and the ankidroid google group might be a good place to start.

Seems there's a partial solution in 4.2, which allows the local to be set for TextView. The docs say: "Typically used for CJK locales to disambiguate Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja characters.". See http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#setTextLocale%28java.util.Locale%29

[Comment deleted]

Yes, it's a partial solution but has many problems, as the app developers have to include it (I've seen than the WWWJDIC application by Nikolay Elenkov has started using it. I hope other applications like JED or Obenkyo will implement it too.

In any case, some other general-use apps won't be affected, like the web browser, notepad-like apps, etc. so as Jim says, the best solution may be to give the user the option to configure a system-wide locale to shown everything in Japanese kanji. People needed multi-locale will still have problems.

In addition, the default browser included in Android is not taking into account the locale of the page. If you visit the Wikipedia Han Unification page, with examples of languange-dependant unified characters, all are displayed the same, while in the computer you will see the differences.

Maybe the best option would be an auto-locale that depending on what text is being shown, it will change the locale automatically. If there is lot of kana, it it almost certainly Japanese.

I have to join the others here. This is a major problem. pat42sm's solution (#18) fixed it for me, but it only works on rooted devices. Otherwise I only managed to change the fonts used in Anki, but when typing Japanese in any other application I had the wrong kanji displayed. It's huge trouble for people who are not aware of the issue and not proficient with kanji (especially learners).

I am astounded that this is not being looked at, especially since it has such a potentially simple solution.

It is not as easy as replacing the font order, that would pass the problem to people reading simplified Chinese. I think that the best solution would be to fix the Han Unification of UTF, but as that is impossible, the best alternative would be, as Jim Breen suggested, to include a global configuration for the default locale of CJK fonts. Right now it seems to be simplified Chinese. If you could change it to Japanese (or Korean or traditional Chinese), that would fix most of the problems, except for people reading both Japanese and Chinese.

I'm sad that with 4.4 this issue was not touched. All Chinese characters are still in simplified Chinese. I already know that this is a serious problem with Japanese people.

Star this issue...Maybe if we get enough stars they will finally notice it
and fix it....
In Android 5!

This a a very stupid issue for any device to have, and far from being a simple inconvenience, it often makes Japanese totally illegible!

This should be fixed as soon as possible. In the case of my LG G2 (Android 4.2), the fonts are also not correctly displayed if I set the system language to Japanese. I have no option to communicate with my Japanese contacts except for using an iPhone..

Please fix this as soon as possible. It's annoying! Currently, learning japanese with an Android device is impossible!

Hello!

I am creating an application for studying kanji on Android. I faced exactly the same issue. So I make my application use a custom font for displaying japanese characters. The font is: hiragino-kaku-gothic-pro-w3.otf. Using this font makes my application able to display CORRECTLY the japanese fonts (I verified the characters from thisd link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_language_dependent_characters). This is good, BUT, from Android 4.4x, this font is cannot be displayed! So it is really bad... I use a Nexus 5 and a Nexus 7 and Android 4.4.2, this font loading problem is still present.

Symptoms: the strings using this custom font are not visible, nothing is displayed.
Please Google team, do something to fix this problem, this is clearly a major issue for japanese learners!

Just for information, when I set the default language of my phone to "japanese", the font will be displayed correctly. I think that if the current language is not japanese, the "chinese" version of the kanji will be used.

If you a developing an app, use "setTextLocale" to get the Japanese locale running for your app. Then it should display OK and you shouldn't have to muck around with custom fonts.

Most non-japanese android devices don't even have an installed japanese font! So even setting language to japanese, would not display the correct japanese kanji..

I just found this open-source tool that can automatically change the fallback order to prefer a Japanese font with a single button press, thus "fixing" this issue, at least until an official fix is in Android. Unfortunately, it still needs "root". I haven't tested it myself yet, as my device is not rooted.

It seems to even be able to install the IPAGothic font automatically for you, which can be helpful in case you like that better or your device doesn't have a Japanese font pre-installed.

You can download APKs ready to install from here:
https://github.com/ascendedguard/android-kanji-fix/releases

And here's the source code:
https://github.com/ascendedguard/android-kanji-fix/

As a work-around the AEDict dictionary app now ships with the DroidSansJapanese.ttf font file. Looks good. Pity it only fixes the problem for one app, but it's a start.

FYI, the DroidSansJapanese.ttf fixes the issue on the Anki flash card app
as well (but it's certainly not the prettiest display out there...)

4.4.3 is out today. Still no fix.

Could anyone check if Android L brings anything new to the table regarding the Han Unification Problem? It has certainly been one of the most maddening problem I have with my Android handset.

This is ridiculous. Reading Japanese with English locale is broken.

3 years on and still no fix for this bug. This is disappointing, Google

we all switched to apple years ago dudes

Just an FYI, I tried Android L and it does NOT fix the problem yet. Really, an option in Language Settings that toggles between using the Japanese and the Chinese font by default shouldn't even be that hard.

And we are not even getting into the variants of Chinese Han character here. Note that the Chinese typeface included DroidSansFallback.ttf conforms to GB18030 standard used in mainland China (even for traditional Han characters not used in the mainland), which is subtly different from the Taiwan and Hong Kong standards (which are different still from each other). That being said, even just solving the Japanese-Chinese Han problem will go a long way towards usability.

Did you know that the iPhone's share in smartphone market in Japan is the highest in the world... 70%... and this Han Unification issue is one of the top reasons?

As I understand it, Android phones sold in the Japanese market have a Japanese system font. I doubt that font is an issue in market share.

Apple got off to a slow start in Japan because they were locked into one telco, which didn't have great coverage. They fixed that and have been advertising heavily.

Somewhere else at Google, this problem is recognized and somehow addressed - they have created a font (Noto CJK) which "is designed to take these variations into account": http://googledevelopers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/noto-cjk-font-that-is-complete.html

I'm not sure the Noto CJK font (which I think is great) was really developed with the Android problem in mind. I have discussed the matter with Ken Lunde from Adobe, who was the project manager for that font (it is a joint development). I think he was not that aware there was a problem with Android, but he agrees that the new font, which has locale-specific capability, will be potentially a good way to solve the problem as a single font would do the job.

Jim Breen

I take it that this still hasn't been fixed in lollipop? :(

I lost any hope time ago.

Options:
1- Switch your phone to Japanese.
2- Ask the developers to use Java Locale settings (limited help here, Google apps like the browser or mail, or forgotten apps won't be fixed)
3- Switch to iPhone.

If we somehow got more people to star this issue...

Would that help?

@#64 is suggestion 2 actually working? Do you have a link?

It seems it is http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#setTextLocale%28java.util.Locale%29 

I think it is working, you can configure your app's locale.

Just tried that. It is working, yeah. But the Japanese IME suggestions don't care, system wide it's of course still Chinese characters.

The Chinese font is more edgy, Japanese more rounded.

All in all it's just a mixup of different font types and character representations, not a good solution for Android.

We need multiple locale settings system wide. I don't see any other way.

I add my voice to the din. I am a learner of both Chinese and Japanese, and I frequently text and use apps in/for both languages, and it annoys me endlessly to get the wrong characters represented. Maybe from Google's perspective, China is the bigger market, so who cares if Japanese characters are misrepresented, so long as Chinese characters are there. Wouldn't it be as simple including a font in the system that developers can consistently point to for there apps?

Did this get fixed in 5.1? (Not that I'm holding my breath.)

Why has this been marked as obsolete, does that mean it has been fixed?

Of course it's not obsolete! The problem wasn't fixed with 5.0 (which I'm running on my Nexus 5) and there was no mention of it in the 5.1 announcement.

How can we get through to people at Google?

I just checked, It is still not fixed in 5.1

We need way more people to complain about it, the problem is a bit hard for some people to define and they wouldn't know where to voice their complaints.

So it's perhaps been marked as obsolete because the devs think it was only an issue with Android 3?

Eugh this is such a major program, I can't belive it's just ignored.

Imagine if half of the English alphabet were upsidown and back to front if you were trying to read English on phone bought in Japan for example.

Can we appeal this "obsolete" designation, or start a new issue thread?

At this point we need to mark it as a new issue because this one will be completly ignored now, and we need 2,000 people to star it.

The problem is still there, so how is this obsolete?

I have just filed a bug report as Issue 36949180.

        Japanese text not rendered correctly

[This problem was reported years ago and was assigned " Issue 36932622 ". A few minutes ago someone from Google closed the issue and marked it "obsolete". No comment was provided. The problem still persists with Android 5.1]

The basic problem is that a number of characters in the unified CJK set in Unicode are rendered differently in Chinese and Japanese. The current Android releases all render these in the Chinese style unless the entire device (all menus, messages, etc.) has been set to Japanese. What is needed is a system-wide locale selection, as Apple has provided with iOS, which allows a user to specify Japanese rendering for CJK characters. At present this can be done at the app level by developers, but this does not apply to general apps such as browsers, Gmail, etc.

Why do we still not have this feature? Android is worthless.

But this issue isn't even resolved even if I switch my whole phone language to Japanese, it still renders as Chinese.  Surely it actually wouldn't be hard to write a menu item under "language" where you could choose priority for rendering, that way, even users who use 2 or 3 of the CJK sets could be satisfied.

Thank you (whoever you are) for reopening this issue. Please note that the title is more accurately "Japanese text not rendered correctly". Also it is NOT confined to Android 4.2. It persists through to 5.1.

Please try and escalate this problem to the point where it actually gets solved.

Nexus 5 Android 5.0.1

When I change the language to Japanese, the rendering is OK. I was able to type Japanese text into Gmail and have it rendered correctly.

I just changed my system into Japanese using more locale 2, and it didn't change anything.

I'm using android 4.0.4, but still I feel like this would be an easy fix, they just don't care because no one at google speaks another language.

It should be clarified that there needs to be a way to get this to work correctly whatever the locale is set to.

However, at the moment I have issues even if I set the locale to Japanese on Android 4.4.2.

I agree that I think a big part of the problem is it's probably hard for the people at Google to understand what the problem is?

If someone from Google had any questions or would like to mention that they do understand the issue it would be greatly appreciated.

I also request that this be given attention, and that a patch with Japanese language fonts be provided as a default font set available in Android. It's the weirdest thing that this one (MAJOR) language has been jettisoned, but many varieties of Chinese are accommodated. Changing locale does nothing to fix the problem, and not all Android phones even have a Japanese locale available anyways. I have also had this problem since I first began using Android, and all of my language learning and other Japanese apps are affected by it. To state it clearly, Chinese and Japanese characters are not the same--there are many subtle and not so subtle differences between individual characters, which is why a Japanese font package in the system is needed.

The new Noto CJK font, which Google helped develop, addresses this issue nicely. It enables the one font to be used for Japanese/Chinese/Whatever renderings of kanji/hanzi/... I have heard it's to be shipped with new Android versions. What we need now is for Android to include a user selection of how we want CJK characters rendered. Call it the "CJK Locale" if you like. I doubt it would be rocket science.

But that's just in one app, right?  That's no good, needs to be a system wide thing.

No, it would be for all apps, because they use standard Java routines for display.

Considering that a workaround that I've heard of simply requires the installation of another font, I really wish that they would fix this for all supported Android versions. I cannot recommend Android devices to Japanese language learners who aren't ready to take the step of setting the entire device to Japanese.

But it's not a problem limited to apps, I think, pretty sure the system is displayed in hanzi too.

Can you tell us what font this is, so maybe some people can get some relief til they fix this?

Looks like it's a little more involved than just adding a font if you want it system wide, but here are some instructions including one from this thread:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=19660#c18
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1901424

Both methods above require rooting the device. Not something I am prepared to do. There should be a more general solution.

[Comment deleted]

With regards to the fix posted earlier at https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=19660#c18:

From Android 5.1, it may also be necessary to modify the file /system/etc/fonts.xml.

Also, be aware that this fix may interfere with future system upgrades; you might have to undo the fix before you can upgrade.

I havn't applied the fix because I'm worried that it will break my system updates.

If it does stop me from upgrading, can I assume that restoring the origional files will be enough to ensure that I can still do the update?

Since the status was changed to "assigned" does that mean they are fixing it now finally?

I can only speak to my own experience with upgrades, and can't make any guarantees about future behavior.

In the past, I've always been able to upgrade somehow or other. Best practice, though, would be to restore the original files before starting the upgrade -- if you wait until an upgrade fails, it might be tricky to complete the upgrade.

If you're worried about your ability to recover from such a situation, perhaps best not to apply the fix.

Wow almost 4 years without a fix. If I had known about how little Google cares about proper Japanese support I'd probably have stuck with the iPhone. Hopefully they are finally fixing it. However, as always, how long will that update take to trickle down to us non-Nexus users?

The bottom line is,
Android already has the required function so all we need is a user interface (and privilege) to assume a secondary language.

---

I've lived in Japan for 23 years and have seen the exact same issue in many systems from time to time. One of them is my Nexus 5 (which has 5.1) and another example is a default installation of Fedora Core 20.

On Fedora you can fix it by assuming Pango a specific language as described in Fedora's page. (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/11/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-International_Language_Support.html, section 4.4.2.1)
Android can handle it, too, right?

Internal tracking number: 7625939

Can we use that number to track progress on the issue? If so, how?

Has this been addressed in Android M?

I installed Android M preview on Nexus 5. While the font has been updated to use NotoSansCJK, the issue is still present. Unless the system language is set to Japanese, most kanjis are rendered using Chinese version of the NotoSans fonts.

Really, all we need here is a system settings UI that allows users to change the fallback font order as defined in:
https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/blob/master/data/fonts/fallback_fonts.xml#L376

It is ridiculous that we have to root the phone to just change the order of this XML file.

[Comment deleted]

I'm completely agree with #106.
It seems M2 firmware is still having a same issue.
I hope it will be fixed before the release version.

I also agree with #106.  The way Android handles this is unacceptable, and quite honestly it has me considering switching to another platform.  This isn't just about choosing Japanese, but how the user CHOOSES what language support they have on their phone regardless if that is Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, etc, etc.  And this is something that Apple actually does well, sadly.  I was able to specify Japanese support without changing the language of the whole device to Japanese, which is what I want, and sure enough it started rendering Japanese kanji instead of Chinese characters.

So please Google, is this really so hard to allow us to make that choice?

As a new Android phone user I was extremely disappointed to find this issue and to see it has been open since 2011.  I am developing a web app for Japanese language learners and presenting Chinese glyphs to Japanese readers is completely unacceptable.  Had I known about this problem before I bought my phone, I would have bought an iPhone instead.

I hope you can give a higher priority to fixing this.
 

What was the change?

How far are changes that happen now from being incorporated into a released OS?

As soon as this is fix and live I'm buying a nexus phone.

Is a change coming? When? Details, please!

Yes, for the love of all that is holy, please! Sort it out!

Just adding my agreement that this needs a fix that doesn't require rooting the device. As a new Japanese learner it's really frustrating having learnt some things wrong before I realised what was going on and even then it's only because the program I use talks you through each kanji as you learn it and I realised it didn't match. I can easily imagine a learner not having this advantage and essentially learning totally incorrect kanji!

Anyone had a chance to use marshmellow and see if this has been fixed yet?

I don't think it has been fixed.

What happened early september was that the owner was taken from r...@google and given now to roozbeh@google I belive.

The person assigned to this is Roozbeh Pournader.

Apparently he is a "Internationalization Engineer"...

Hopefully there will be a fix soon? Otherwise it just seems like its getting passed around.

I've been telling my students to buy apple at this point. It's not worth the confusion.

I'm on Marshmallow now (Nexus 5, build MRA58K) and it appears that the issue is not fixed.

It's still showing Chinese strokes unless I set the system language to Japanese. Very disappointing.

Disappointing yes, but is it really surprising?  No promises were made what to do with this and as far as I can tell it really isn't a very high priority for them right now.  They haven't even made an official comment so expecting something to have come from the Marshmallow release was a bit unrealistic don't you think?