[XeTeX] Japanese line breaking

[Gerrit Sangel]

Hello list,

I have a little question concerning line breaking of Japanese. I bought a 
Asahi Shimbun today and I was a bit surprise at the line breaking.

I knew from XeTeX that the line should not be broken before small kana letters 
like っ. This always had the effect that the right margin of my texts were not 
really well justified. But the Asahi Shimbun does not follow this rule!

For example, they write about Myanmar and the line breaks this way:

ミ
ャンマー

(but in vertical notation)

But I really have to admit, the lines are much more beautiful this way. And to 
counter the argument that one would read it “mi” and then realize that it 
is “mya”, the same problem occurs if a kanji composita is broken. e.g. maybe 
they would first read
中
心
like “naka” and then realize that it is “chūshin”, so that would not be a 
difference to the upper example. But I’m not Japanese, so I can’t really say 
for sure, just speculate.

But returning to my question, does AS have bad typographers or why do they do 
it another way? Please help me in my confusion :)

Thanks
Gerrit