I might not be a typical computer user, but still had to check if I have those infected files. I found this from my home directory:

timppa@haya:~$ LANG=en ls -l ~/home-eka/timppa/work/koululta/jis 
-rw-r--r-- 1 timppa timppa 5168 Jan 11  1991 /home/timppa/home-eka/timppa/work/koululta/jis

It was not a virus, it was a saved post from a newsgroup:

Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Striping of ESC from JIS codeing
Date: 8 Jan 91 00:41:03 GMT