A character rendering device includes: a first drawing unit that divides a shape of a character represented by character shape data into partial areas, and renders the shape of the character area by area; a second drawing unit that renders the character on the basis of the shape of the character drawn by the first drawing unit; a transfer unit that transfers the rendered character; a first memory that stores data; a second memory whose read/write rate is lower than that of the first memory, and whose storage capacity is larger than that of the first memory; and a selection unit that, if a number of the partial areas created by the first drawing unit is equal to or smaller than a threshold value, selects the first memory, and if the number of the partial areas is larger than the threshold value, selects the second memory.