A display apparatus comprising: a display unit formed by continuously and repeatedly arranging N, N signifies a natural number equal to or more than 2, rectangular display elements in a predetermined order in a predetermined arrangement direction in a state where a longitudinal direction of said rectangular display elements intersects perpendicularly with said arrangement direction and displaying a color image in a state where said N a natural number of 2 or more display elements, capable of displaying colors different from each other, arranged in said predetermined order in said arrangement direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of said N display elements are associated with one pixel constituting the color image which is a display object; a multi-gradation character generating unit (4a, 4b) for generating, on the basis of character information on said display object, information on an enlarged character image of a character in the color image which information is to be used for display with said rectangular display elements an image of the character enlarged M, M is a natural number of one or greater, times in the longitudinal direction and N times in the arrangement direction of an original size of the character and generating information on a multi-gradation character image, obtained by gradating a character edge portion, on the basis of the information on said enlarged character image; an element luminance value calculating unit associating one of said rectangular display elements with each pixel train composed of M pixels existing continuously in said longitudinal direction in said multi-gradation character image on the basis of the information on said multi-gradation character image and calculating a luminance value with respect to the one of said rectangular display elements on the basis of a position of intersection of a contour in said enlarged character image, overlapped with said rectangular display element, in said longitudinal direction in a rectangular image coordinate system formed in a state associated with said rectangular display elements; and an element display control unit for controlling a luminance of each said rectangular display element according the luminance value calculated by said element luminance value calculating unit and displaying said multi-gradation character image on said display unit on the basis of the information on said multi-gradation character image, characterized in that the element luminance value calculating unit is configured to determine the luminance value for each rectangular display element by dividing a rectangular display element perpendicularly with respect to two long sides of the rectangular display element into a plurality of regions, each region associated with identification information, and calculating the luminance value of the rectangular display element by using a combination of identification information of a region of intersection of the contour in one of said two long sides and identification information of a region of intersection of the contour in another long side. a display unit formed by continuously and repeatedly arranging N, N signifies a natural number equal to or more than 2, rectangular display elements in a predetermined order in a predetermined arrangement direction in a state where a longitudinal direction of said rectangular display elements intersects perpendicularly with said arrangement direction and displaying a color image in a state where said N a natural number of 2 or more display elements, capable of displaying colors different from each other, arranged in said predetermined order in said arrangement direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of said N display elements are associated with one pixel constituting the color image which is a display object; a multi-gradation character generating unit (4a, 4b) for generating, on the basis of character information on said display object, information on an enlarged character image of a character in the color image which information is to be used for display with said rectangular display elements an image of the character enlarged M, M is a natural number of one or greater, times in the longitudinal direction and N times in the arrangement direction of an original size of the character and generating information on a multi-gradation character image, obtained by gradating a character edge portion, on the basis of the information on said enlarged character image; an element luminance value calculating unit associating one of said rectangular display elements with each pixel train composed of M pixels existing continuously in said longitudinal direction in said multi-gradation character image on the basis of the information on said multi-gradation character image and calculating a luminance value with respect to the one of said rectangular display elements on the basis of a position of intersection of a contour in said enlarged character image, overlapped with said rectangular display element, in said longitudinal direction in a rectangular image coordinate system formed in a state associated with said rectangular display elements; and an element display control unit for controlling a luminance of each said rectangular display element according the luminance value calculated by said element luminance value calculating unit and displaying said multi-gradation character image on said display unit on the basis of the information on said multi-gradation character image,