To discriminate the direction of a manuscript at high speed.

A device for discriminating a manuscript direction comprises an image memory for retaining manuscript images, an image-zone separating section for performing separation of image-zones in manuscript images, a character extracting section for extracting characters from a zone including characters on the basis of results of separation of an image-zone, a feature extracting section for extracting feature vector of a target character from a character image, a feature rotating section for rotating the feature vector, a dictionary memory retaining dictionary data for distance calculation, four distance calculation sections for calculating distances of respective angles, four distance storage section for retaining distances of top two of respective angles, a character determining section for calculating discriminated results of the target character from the distances of top two of the respective angles, and a recognized-results retaining section for retaining recognized results of the target character.