Sorting is as easy as 1, 2, 3 --- but not as easy as a, b, c!
summary
Sorting Japanese strings fails unless pronunciation and script are handled explicitly: computers misorder kanji because pronunciation depends on context and kana order matters. Java’s Collator fixes locale-sensitive comparisons but still misorders kanji, so the team builds a workaround that decouples display from sort by adding hiragana transliteration for each label, applies a Japanese collator, and verifies it on 24 categories — it works for that set but admits poor scalability for user‑generated content.
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