JAPANESE WRITING: FASHION, ART, DESIGN

How many times have you happened to be captivated by those fascinating Japanese characters and tried to guess what their meaning could be? We are talking about kanji (漢字): even if they may seem like just the method used in Japan to write, they represent a fundamental aspect of the culture, design and art of the Land of the Rising Sun.

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Exhibition of typefaces at the Tokyo Art Museum © Liam Burnett-Blue

In writing the Japanese language, a combination of four different types of character systems is actually used: kanji, hiragana, katakana, and the Western alphabet. The kanji characters are native to China: the advent of trade with this country, the Japanese people began to learn the language and the writing of the ideograms, subsequently absorbed and modified to adapt to the native language.

The kanji in relief on the streets of Tokyo © Jun Taniguchi

A curiosity? The total number of existing kanji is around 50,000 units , but only the 1,945 jōyō kanji (commonly used kanji) and the 293 jinmeiyō kanji for proper names can be used for printing.

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Mini Kit Kat Dark Matcha © Tenoha

A fun example of how Japanese typography is used by different brands comes from Kit Kat : the very famous sweet of English origin was produced for the Japanese market in many curious variations. Landing in Japan, the use of kanji to identify the latter led to the creation of packages that look like underground works by a graffiti artist .

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Shuetsu Sato signage at Nippori Station © Wikimedia / Mayuno

It is possible to find kanji in every corner of Japan , but it is underground that simple writings are transformed into works of art. In fact, in the Tokyo subway, Shuetsu Sato (佐藤修悦) guides rush hour commuters thanks to his writings created with very common scotch tape : thanks to a few rolls of adhesive tape and a pair of scissors, the artist managed to elevating humble construction site signs into incredible masterpieces.

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Reproduction of a kanji © Niketh Vellanki

If this brief introduction to the world of Japanese writing, typography and ideograms has fascinated you, why not try reproducing the kanji or the works of Shuetsu Sato? We are sure it will be worth it!