Abstract: A character recognition apparatus has space storage to store Eigen spaces made from a plurality of rotated character images, loci storage to store loci drawn for projection points obtained by projecting the plurality of rotated character images in corresponding Eigen spaces; an input unit to input the recognition target images; a distance calculation unit to obtain distances between projection points obtained by projecting the recognition target images in Eigen space and respective loci for the plurality of character types, and a candidate selection unit to select candidates for images for recognition target characters from the plurality of character types based on the distance.