MySQL Japanese characters

Question

Hello,
I already searched the froums for a soluton to my problem but couldn't find any for it though I tried some of the things that were proposed. I have a MySQL Database where I store Japanese characters in SJIS. I tested if they are in SJIS and they are.
I am using mysql 4.1.3b-beta, mysql-connector-java-3.0.14, JBuilderX (jdk 1.4.2), and OS XP.
When I try to retrieve the data I only get a square, then a some character, then a square, then another character,... but not the actual Kanji/Kana. I can display Japanese characters correctly when I retrieve them from a file, so I don't think it's a problem with the font.
My code is as follows:
public void testDB(){
String result ="";
Connection con = null;
Statement st = null;
try
Properties prop = new java.util.Properties();
prop.put("user","");
prop.put("password","");
prop.put("useUnicode", "true");
prop.put("characterEncoding","SJIS");
String url = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/japanese";
//Class.forName ("org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver");
Class.forName ("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance ();
con = DriverManager.getConnection (url, prop);
result= "Database connection established";
st = con.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = null;
String querry1 = "SELECT * FROM jp";
PreparedStatement pstmt = con.prepareStatement(querry1);
rs = pstmt.executeQuery();
int i = 0;
while (rs.next()) {
result = rs.getString(1);
     jTable1.setFont(new Font("Arial Unicode MS",0,15));
jTable1.setValueAt(result,i,0);
i++;
catch (Exception e)
// result = "Cannot connect to database server";
finally
if (con != null)
try
con.close ();
// result ="Database connection terminated";
catch (Exception e) { /* ignore close errors */ }
I hope someone can help me as MySql is my last option after I already discovered that I couldn't use MS Access and Foxpro because the ODBC:JDBC bridge doesn't work correctly for unicode.
On a side note as I am new to MySql after installing version mysql4.1.3b. I no longer have the mysqld.exe but only mysqld-opt.exe. So I am using this instead. But I don't think that can be responsible for my problem.
Thaks for any help.
S

Answer 1

I see your original question was sent in August so maybe you have found an answer ?.. Would be interesting to see how you fixed it.
I was having a similar sort of problem but managed to fix it by looking at the fonts available to Java on my machine and setting the font used by the graphics object to one of the japanese fonts. (nb. I see in your code you are setting the font to arial unicode, maybe setting it to a japanaese font name would be enough)
Hopefully the following will give you some help.
// this line sticks the name of all fonts in the graphics environment in an array
String[] nameArray = GraphicsEnvironment
               .getLocalGraphicsEnvironment()
               .getAvailableFontFamilyNames();
// I know that the last two fonts are for japanese characters. I chose the font name second from the end of the array.
int listfonts=nameArray.length-2 ;
//then I sent the font for the g2 object.
Font fontselec ;
fontselec = new Font(nameArray[listfonts],Font.PLAIN,24) ;
g2.setFont(fontselec) ;
best regards
Graham