PURPOSE: To segment a contacting character with high accuracy even in the Japanese language document of the multi size and undefined pitch.

CONSTITUTION: A row segmenting part 15 unifies the circumscribed rectangle of the black picture element combination extracted by a circumscribed rectangle extracting part 13 and segments a row. A character block segmenting part 17 segments the character block by the circumscribed rectangle unification, a standard character width calculating part 19 calculates the standard character width of the row from the maximum height of the character block, a contacting character discriminating part 21 detects the character width of the width more than two times as much as the standard character width and a contacting character separating part 23 divides the character block at the position where the vertical projection value is the threshold or below. A character pattern preparing part prepares the character pattern candidate by the combination of the character block, a recognizing part 26 recognizes, and a selecting part 27 determines the character pattern by evaluating the recognized result and outputs the recognized result.