Japanese characters in GD

[sysadmin]

In a PHP module, We have a few graphics made by GD that need to have some Japanese words in it.
These words are entered manually from a form by Japanese users, and that text should be displayed within the graphics.

PHP has the mbstring module and can display and handle Japanese words via echo with no problem.

However `gd` displays `???` instead.

Checking `gd_info()`, the following configuration is set

JIS-mapped Japanese Font Support: Disabled

This could be the problem. But I didn't find how to `Enable` it.

Is is possible on Ubuntu 10.04 (PHP 5.3.3) without recompiling the whole PHP?

Thanks