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New way of unzipping Japanese zip files


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I've recently discovered a new way to unzip zipped files that contain Japanese filenames that doesn't require changing the system locale and can optionally forego needing admin privileges. This method uses two programs, Locale Emulator by xupefei and 7-Zip. Both programs can be easily found on Google. This method only works with the 32-bit x86 version of 7-Zip and has only been tested with version 2.4.0.0 of Locale Emulator.

  1. Install Locale Emulator
  2. Install the 32-bit x86 version of 7-Zip. See alternate instructions if you lack administrative privileges.
  3. In C:\Program Files (x86)\7-Zip, delete the Lang folder
  4. Right click on 7zFM.exe
  5. Select Locale Emulator > Run in Japanese. 7-Zip's file browser should appear in English.
  6. Navigate to the file you wish to extract and extract normally

Alternate instructions for unprivileged users

  1. Install Locale Emulator
  2. Download 7-Zip Portable from PortableApps.com
  3. Run the executable and select a suitable folder for the pseudo-installation
  4. In that folder, go to Apps\7-Zip and delete the Lang folder
  5. Continue from step 4 of the normal instructions

(Optional) Make a shortcut

  1. Make a shortcut for LEProc.exe located in Locale Emulator's installation folder
  2. Copy the full path to 7zFM.exe
  3. Right click on the shortcut created in step 1 and open Properties
  4. In the Target field, add a space at the end before pasting the path to 7zFM.exe
  5. (Optional) Change the icon
    1. Click Change Icon...
    2. Say Ok to the warning prompt
    3. Clear out the text field at the top and paste the path to 7zFM.exe
    4. Click outside of the text field to update the available icons
    5. Select an icon

Please let me know if you find this useful and if you have any problems getting this to work.

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Unicode is not required (or seemingly used by default) for ZIP files. I tested this in Windows and mounted my testing setup briefly to Linux to verify a problem someone was asking about. On both systems, the names of extracted Japanese files were garbled when extracted normally and appeared in Japanese when extracted as such.

Windows just makes extracting in Japanese much harder somehow. In Linux, the fix turned out to be unzip -O shift-jis. On Windows, even the CLI of 7-Zip is limited in what character encodings it can use for console output and list input and is unable to control the encoding used to unzip a file. The only officially supported way of changing the locale used to unzip files is to change the "Language for non-Unicode programs" aka the system locale. Since this is a system value, changing it requires a restart of the system and Administrator privileges which is a pain if you don't want to stick with the Japanese locale which has some mildly irritating side effects for English users.

Edited by anonymousJS
Realized that I was rambling techno-babble and decided to clean it up (see edit history)
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