I actually use GNOME and have never enabled Japanese input on Xfce, so I don't know the answer. But that's the first thing I would check.
Did you switch it from latin to hiragana within Anthy? There should be
another menu option in the menu when you're in Anthy mode.
- [Trisquel-users] Japanese (anthy) under XFCE jbahn
- Re: [Trisquel-users] Japanese (anthy) under XFCE onpon4
- Re: [Trisquel-users] Japanese (anthy) under XFCE hartkemd
