Provided is a feature for more appropriately proposing similar character string candidates.　A character candidate proposal device comprising: a similar character storage unit in which similarity relationships of the appearance of characters are stored; an existing-character storage unit in which existing character strings are stored; a entrusted-processing unit that receives one or more characters, and is entrusted with offering character candidates having similar appearance; a comparison processing unit that specifies candidates for characters having similar appearance to the received character by comparing with the similar character storage unit, and compares with existing character strings stored in the existing character storage unit, among combinations of the candidates for characters having similar appearance; and a candidate character transmission processing unit that outputs, as candidate characters, combinations of candidates for characters having similar appearance for which hits resulted from the comparison by the comparison processing unit.