 <p>Japanese_90 appears to be the new collation name.</p> <p><a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb330962%28v=sql.90%29.aspx#intlftrql2005_topic24" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb330962%28v=sql.90%29.aspx#intlftrql2005_topic24</a></p> <p>Note, you might want to consider the _KS suffix if you want to consider Hirigana/Katakana whilst sorting. Like Marc_S says, you will also want to ensure your column datatype is nvarchar</p>