Meiryo

is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font on Japanese systems beginning with Windows Vista.

Meiryo was created out of a growing need for legible CJK fonts compatible with Microsoft ClearType's hinting and subpixel rendering system. It was meant to increase the legibility of Japanese text on LCD screens, and would thus take the place of MS Gothic and MS Mincho, both of which had been widely used at the time. While most Latin fonts were able to use hinting at any size, most CJK fonts were incompatible with the technology (with the exception of some fonts such as Arial Unicode MS). Meiryo did away with embedding bitmap images into fonts for use at small sizes, a strategy employed by many CJK fonts (including MS Gothic and MS Mincho) to compensate for a lack of hinting support.