Platform:
Solaris 5.9, sun4u, sparc. (Other platforms exibit this bug as well.)

Locale:
Set locale to something other than english: setenv LC_ALL ru_RU.UTF-8.

Run:
Run a java GUI application, for instance, your_jdk/demo/jfc/Notepad/Notepad.jar.

The window for IM, located at the bottom of the application, flickers several times when the application loads and sometimes when the focus is changed within the application.

If GUI is 'xhost'ed on another machine, it becomes unusably slow.