A character compaction and generation method and apparatus which is particularly adapted to the generation of complex characters such as Kanji characters. A dot matrix (Fig. 2-1) defining a given character is compacted into a sparse matrix (Fig. 2-7), with the original character being reconstructed for printing or display from the compacted character defined in the sparse matrix. Each character in the complex character set is compacted and stored in memory (50) one time only, with decompaction being performed each time a given character is to be generated. A set of symbols are defined to represent different patterns which occur frequently in the entire complex character set. Different combinations of the symbols define a given character. The information stored for each sparse matrix representing a given character is comprised of eacn symbol in the sparse matrix, its position, and its size parameter if the symbol represents a family of patterns which differ only in size. Three groups (A, B, C,) of different patterns are defined which occur frequently in the complex character set, namely, a first group (A) which has a fixed size for each pattern, a second group (B) which has one size parameter which must be specified for each pattern, and a third group (Cl which has a plurality of size parameters which must be specified for each pattern. Certain ones of the characters have elements of different patterns which overlap, such that the character may be encoded utilizing less symbols, and according less bytes of data. A given pattern may be generated atthe same time another pattern is being decoded.