A self-compensated water-hydrostatic bearing is well known to have advantages in stiffness. In this paper, its concept is extended to a hydrostatic journal bearing for achieving higher stiffness. The finite element method is applied to analyze the load characteristics of the self-compensated hydrostatic journal bearing. The analysis results reveal that the self-compensated journal bearing has higher load capacity and higher stiffness than conventional, fixed capillary journal bearings. and that this benefit degrades in the case of high eccentricity. Thus, a spindle system with self-compensated journal bearings must be designed to ensure a sufficiently large load capacity. A rectangular type capillary is also introduced with consideration of the practical application of the self-compensated hydrostatic journal bearing. Theoretical analysis results show that the rectangular type capillary is more beneficial than conventional annular type capillaries in practical use. The experimental verification on the analysis method is made to show that the experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical results.