Japanese input suddenly broken

Question

I'm a Japanese student, and have previously been using Japanese input on Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS. It was working fine until yesterday, and stopped working earlier today when I rebooted.

Symptoms

Selecting the Japanese keyboard (either via Super+Space or from the top-right language menu), followed by selecting Hiragana input (top-right language menu, Input Mode, Hiragana). This used to work fine in all apps, but now:

1. Japanese input doesn't work in chrome, gedit, nor the file browser (English is written instead).
2. Japanese input does work in the Activities search window (hit Super and type) and in the Run box (Alt+F2)
3. Hebrew input (also configured) does work everywhere.

Potential cause

Looking at /var/log/dpkg.log, I see some packages updated recently:

$ cat dpkg.log | awk '/^2020-09-19 13.*status installed.*/ {print}' | sort -u
2020-09-19 13:23:26 status installed bsdutils:amd64 1:2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:27 status installed libsmartcols1:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:28 status installed libblkid1:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:28 status installed libblkid1:i386 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:28 status installed libmount1:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:28 status installed libmount1:i386 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:28 status installed libuuid1:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:28 status installed libuuid1:i386 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:30 status installed util-linux:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:33 status installed alsa-ucm-conf:all 1.2.2-1ubuntu0.3
2020-09-19 13:23:33 status installed python3-click:all 7.0-3
2020-09-19 13:23:33 status installed python3-colorama:all 0.4.3-1build1
2020-09-19 13:23:34 status installed grub-common:amd64 2.04-1ubuntu26.4
2020-09-19 13:23:34 status installed im-config:all 0.44-1ubuntu1.2
2020-09-19 13:23:34 status installed libfdisk1:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:34 status installed mount:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:34 status installed rfkill:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:34 status installed uuid-dev:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:35 status installed fdisk:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:35 status installed grub2-common:amd64 2.04-1ubuntu26.4
2020-09-19 13:23:35 status installed grub-efi-amd64-bin:amd64 2.04-1ubuntu26.4
2020-09-19 13:23:35 status installed grub-pc-bin:amd64 2.04-1ubuntu26.4
2020-09-19 13:23:35 status installed initramfs-tools-bin:amd64 0.136ubuntu6.3
2020-09-19 13:23:35 status installed libblkid-dev:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:35 status installed uuid-runtime:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:38 status installed grub-pc:amd64 2.04-1ubuntu26.4
2020-09-19 13:23:38 status installed initramfs-tools:all 0.136ubuntu6.3
2020-09-19 13:23:38 status installed initramfs-tools-core:all 0.136ubuntu6.3
2020-09-19 13:23:38 status installed libmount-dev:amd64 2.34-0.1ubuntu9.1
2020-09-19 13:23:40 status installed grub-efi-amd64-signed:amd64 1.142.6+2.04-1ubuntu26.4
2020-09-19 13:23:40 status installed libc-bin:amd64 2.31-0ubuntu9
2020-09-19 13:23:40 status installed systemd:amd64 245.4-4ubuntu3.2
2020-09-19 13:23:46 status installed desktop-file-utils:amd64 0.24-1ubuntu3
2020-09-19 13:23:46 status installed gnome-menus:amd64 3.36.0-1ubuntu1
2020-09-19 13:23:46 status installed install-info:amd64 6.7.0.dfsg.2-5
2020-09-19 13:23:46 status installed man-db:amd64 2.9.1-1
2020-09-19 13:23:46 status installed mime-support:all 3.64ubuntu1
2020-09-19 13:24:02 status installed initramfs-tools:all 0.136ubuntu6.3

Package im-config ("Input method configuration framework") is particularly suspicious. It was upgraded from 0.44-1ubuntu1.1 to 0.44-1ubuntu1.2 today.

Output of im-config -m:

default
custom
ibus

ibus

BTW, running im-config shows a message about manually-modified config being present and preventing the tool from working, in the form of ~/.xinputrc:

$ cat ~/.xinputrc
run_im fcitx

I... don't recall putting that there, but it's been there since March (which is likely the first time I configured a Japanese keyboard on this system).

Answer 1

This was solved by removing ~/.xinputrc (which is what im-config -n REMOVE appears to do). Thank you for your help!