# Mp3tag displays ballot boxes instead of Japanese characters
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/mp3tag-displays-ballot-boxes-instead-of-japanese-characters/19408
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [October 3, 2017, 6:40pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/mp3tag-displays-ballot-boxes-instead-of-japanese-characters/19408 "2017-10-03T18:40:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@thwaller](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/thwaller)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2017, 6:40pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/mp3tag-displays-ballot-boxes-instead-of-japanese-characters/19408/1 "2017-10-03T18:40:11Z")
I do not mean to hijack your post, but my query is very closely related to this. I have an issue with this on just reading tags from MP3 and M4A files. I often get the famous ballot boxes "☐" in many parts of the MP3TAG UI. Is there any way to set MP3TAG to read all in UTF8 in addition to writing UTF8?
My intent is not to debate ASCII vs UTF, if there are some who have reasons for ASCII, all are free to make their own choices.
EDIT:
Wanted to add the specifics for this...here is the artist for example:
Artist: リーラ・ジェイムス
In MP3TAG it appears as a series of ☐'s, but if I copy and paste it, it will paste with the correct characters as long as it is not in MP3TAG.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2017, 6:42am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/mp3tag-displays-ballot-boxes-instead-of-japanese-characters/19408/2 "2017-10-04T06:42:08Z")
I've moved your post to a dedicated topic — it seems to be a separate issue.
Mp3tag reads Unicode characters as long as they are encoded in Unicode (UTF-8 or UTF-16 LE/BE). However, some tags are stored in the system codepage of the locale, which makes it difficult to impossible to read.
Are you using Mp3tag on Windows or are you using the Wine-based macOS version? Could you provide an example file which shows this behavior (preferable via private email)?
Kind regards
– Florian
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:27pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/mp3tag-displays-ballot-boxes-instead-of-japanese-characters/19408/3 "2026-02-09T12:27:02Z")