Raspberry Pi Release Japanese Keyboard Variant

The Japanese keyboard is the latest layout available. Last month we saw the release of Swedish, Portuguese, Danish and Norwegian layouts of the official keyboard. All of the keyboards come with three USB 2.0 type-A ports, adding much needed extra ports to your Raspberry Pi. Available in two color choices, red and white or black and grey, this new keyboard has been designed to work with all three Japanese character sets. 

The Japanese keyboard is the latest layout available. Last month we saw the release of Swedish, Portugese, Danish and Norwegian layouts of the official keyboard. All of the keyboards come with three USB 2.0 type-A ports, adding much needed extra ports to your Raspberry Pi. Available in two color choices, red and white or black and grey, this new keyboard has been designed to work with all three Japanese alphabets. 

Simon Martin, Senior Principal Engineer at Raspberry Pi Trading explains some of the challenges they faced “We ended up reverse-engineering generic Japanese keyboards to see how they work, and mapping the keycodes to key matrix locations. We are fortunate that we have a very patient keyboard IC vendor, called Holtek, which produces the custom firmware for the controller.”

The Japanese and other keyboards are available from Pimoroni and The Pi Hut who offer international shipping and via Japanese reseller SwitchScience.