Hello,

If you want to store and retrieve Japanese characters in Spring framework using MySQL and Hibernate follow the following steps.

Step1: You should have Japanese language support installed on your system or change your system locale






Step 2: Change you project text encoding as UTF-8 
            For eclipse: Window->Preference->General->Workspace
            For Netbeans: Right click on project > properties > sources >Encoding.

Step 3: Place Spring framework’s in built character encoding filter as a first filter in filter chain (web.xml) to make sure it runs first during request processing and runs last during response processing

web.xml

    <filter>  
        <filter-name>encodingFilter</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>encoding</param-name>
            <param-value>UTF-8</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <init-param>
         <!-- set forceEncoding to true if you want to override encoding of servlet -->
            <param-name>forceEncoding</param-name>
            <param-value>true</param-value> 
        </init-param>
    </filter>
    
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>encodingFilter</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>


Step 4: Set JSP Page encoding to UTF-8

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

Step 5: Set Hibernate connection encoding scheme to UTF-8 

<property name="hibernate.connection.characterEncoding">UTF-8</property>

 Step 6: Add i18n interceptor 

<bean id="localeChangeInterceptor" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
        <property name="paramName" value="lang" />
</bean>

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping"> 
        <property name="interceptors">
            <ref bean="localeChangeInterceptor" />
        </property>
</bean>

Step 7: For the connection url you have to append characterEncoding=UTF-8

jdbc:mysql://{ipaddress}:{port}/{database_name}?characterEncoding=UTF-8

Step 8: Your database should have COLLATE='utf8_general_ci' and Charset = UTF8 and also your table should have the same.
Use this query if necessary to apply on each table.
ALTER TABLE `{table_name}` COLLATE='utf8_general_ci', CONVERT TO CHARSET utf8; 

Done! Ready to go...