Signs and Symbols

THE TRAVELER TO Japan soon notices a vast number of signs and symbols around him. These marks, figures, emblems, purveying information and displaying advertisements, crowd the cities and dominate the horizons. Signs seem to be everywhereon roofs, walls, doors, and windows. Almost every available surface carries a message.

These messages the traveler has little hope of deciphering. If he could read them, he would probably pay them no more attention than he gives the plethora of signs and symbols in his own country. Since he cannot read them, however, his attention is drawn to them all the more strongly.

They are obviously a functional part of the environment. They clearly proclaim. And they are often beautiful. The visitor admires the pleasing abstract shapes, the skill with which many are executed. His enjoyment of them is both primary and proper because traditionally signs and symbols in Japan are also meant to be aesthetically pleasing. Still, the illiterate visitor is missing a great deal.

To be sure, some signs are universal. Red is for negative directions, green for permissive, yellow for warning. This he understands, as well as the use of red to signify hot, and blue to show cold. Moreover, since Japan uses universal pictographs, he can tell which is the men’s toilet or when he is approaching a railroad crossing. Most other messages, however, remain opaque, though to the Japanese around him the meaning is so transparent that they seem not even to notice.

If the visitor stays for a time he will begin to discriminate among the messages. Just as a child learns, he will start by sorting the signs into groups or classes, and the first class will probably be according to shape. Traffic signs, for example, are usually distinguished not only by a written message but also by shape. In America their form is standardized: stop signs are octagonal; yield signs are equilateral triangles with one point down; warning signs are diamond-shaped. Japan has an analogous shape vocabulary that one readily learns.

The next method of sorting the signs out is by location. In most countries, municipal information—”Don’t walk,” “Keep to the left”—is posted in a predetermined and logical place. Traditionally all information is this rigorously placed in Japan. Thus the Japanese restaurant has three positions where its name and sometimes its speciality are displayed—the signboard, the shop curtain and the lantern. Once in Japan, the foreigner soon learns to look in these places, but even then he often does not know what he is seeing. The reason is the language, the medium through which the message is conveyed.

The Japanese written language is a complex of ideograms and syllable signs covered broadly by the term ji, which means “letters.” It comprises Chinese (kanji), and two syllabaries. The first syllabary, hiragana, is used for phonetic renderings of native Japanese words and the second, katakana, is usually for phonetic renderings of words transliterated from other languages.

A Chinese character usually represents a whole idea, and thus it is a complete word in itself, a system that reduces the need for sentence structure. In a country depending on an alphabet, a sentence, even if elliptical, is needed to convey a thought of any complexity. In kanji country it is the character itself that often stands for all, and is all that is necessary. Centuries of using this system have developed in people an extraordinary ability not only to read the characters themselves but also the nuances and overtones that surround and color each character.

We follow a somewhat similar process when, for example, we read “The Pause that Refreshes,” and absorb its message without even thinking what the phrase means. It could be argued, however, that when the Japanese read the character (the kanji for sake), for example, associations of conviviality, warmth, solace and enjoyment emerge more strongly than when we read the word “whisky.” Our word is a combination of alphabetic letters, like every other word we have, while the Chinese character stands more strongly for the thing itself. It represents it more directly than a word written with alphabetic letters can, and this helps account for the way the Japanese react to their signs. (Whether or not such an argument is valid, at least the Japanese themselves seem convinced of it.)

Just as the Japanese are alive to the nuances of the word itself, they are also aware of the way the word is written. In the West, unless you work in publishing or printing, you are no longer likely to be sensitive to the effects of different styles of typography. We know the bold lettering of news headlines and the fanciful script of wedding invitations, but few others, and the fact that virtually all our communications are printed mechanically has blinded us to the infinitely subtler nuances of handwriting styles. In Japan, however, calligraphy is still an important aspect of life.

The effectiveness of any sign or symbol depends on the nexus of associations surrounding it. A symbol reminds us of all the attributes we associate with what it represents. Even the simplest of symbols— or NO ENTRY—can carry fairly complicated associations, and much more is conveyed when the writing itself gives a resonance to the basic sense.

Again we can find an example in our own culture. If in America we come across we know more than that food and drink are available. The message is grasped at once, for the lettering gives an indication of what kind of food and drink and what kind of ambience to expect. Both the affectations of Gothic script and of carefully obsolete spelling indicate gentility and respect for age. Certainly the atmosphere will be more contrived than in an establishment that simply proclaims EATS. There is also the implication that the clientele of such a tearoom will be older rather than younger, with more women than men. All these complicated overtones we take in at a glance. The full message is understood without our thinking about it. We receive the message the proprietors have directed at us. We have an instant index of the place.

In Japan the process is essentially similar. The reading and interpretation, however, allow for far more complicated judgments. The main reason for this is that there are many styles of script, each with its own associations.

To begin with, the Japanese distinguish among four major categories of written scripts. The first of these, reisho, evolved from China before the Han dynasty, and derives from the lettering used for inscriptions carved on stone or on seals. (There is another form as well, also stiffly Chinese: tensho.) The second, dating from late Han, is called kaisho. It is a calligraphic style from which the Japanese developed katakana. The third is gyosho, the style in which most Japanese write. The fourth style is the fluid sosho, from which came hiragana, or, as it was once called, hentaigana. It is so loose that it is often difficult to read and the Japanese say that anything more fluid than sosho is illegible. These styles will become clearer after examining the illustration below. The character is tsuki, or “moon,” and this pronunciation is indicated phonetically in the hiragana printed forms. The pair of katakana (separated vertically by a dot) indicate two other pronunciations (and meanings) also carried by this character. First is getsu, as in getsuyobi, the word for “Monday.” (We have something similar. We have “moon” and we also have a form of the word in Monday.) The second group of katakana indicates another meaning and pronunciation: gatsu, the suffix used in the months-ichigatsu, nigatsu, sangatsu Ganuary, February, March), etc. This, then, is what the character means.

The various scripts, however, indicate or create nuances. To explain this, let us pretend that there are four restaurants, each calling itselfTsuki and using this character. What kind of atmosphere would you expect if each one used a different style of lettering?

To Japanese, the reisho character could only indicate a Chinese restaurant or else a place with very old associations, either au thentic or assumed. The feeling might be a little like our Olde Tearoome, China being to Japan as England is to America. The second restaurant, its name in kaisho script, would not tell too much since this is the style widely used for many signs. The nuances might be understood as “traditional” or as “everyday.” In either case there would be an association with Tokyo and the culture implied by the “new” capital.

With signs in gyosho or sosho, however, one’s thoughts would turn to the old capital, Kyoto, and its softer, mellower moods. A shop sign in gyosho indicates a degree of refinement, a kind of delicacy that could be feminine. Sosho, which many Japanese find hard to read, can also indicate self-conscious elegance—perhaps something with an artistic flavor.

While all of this may seem recondite enough to the Westerner, it is only the beginning. Each of these styles has subdivisions. There is, for example, the script called Edo-moji. This category, associated with Tokyo during the eighteenth century, consists of styles named kantei, yose, joruri, kago, and kaku-moji. From each of these come other styles. Kantei, for example, produced the kabuki-moji, a style associated mainly with that drama, and the sumo or chikara-moji, connected mainly with sumo wrestling. In addition, there is the popular Edo style called hige-(or “whiskered”) moji, in which individual bristle strokes are visible. A cursive script, near gyosho in feeling, the “whiskered”-moji, though intended to be spontaneous and free, is, in fact, rigidly stylized. The passage of the brush must leave seven distinct bristle marks; in the narrower parts of the character it must show five, and as it leaves the paper it must show three. This seven-five-three formula, derived from China, is an auspicious combination applied to many occasions, such as the shrine visits of young children at these three ages.

Again, all of this is arcane to Westerners—and, it might be added, is becoming remote to Japanese as well. Yet there is still a wealth of nuance, a treasury of shared and accepted associations that all Japanese derive from their signs and symbols.

The process is less complicated than it sounds, because no conscious thought is involved in this kind of reading. Such nuances are felt at once or not felt at all. Since associations are involved—”feelings” rather than “thoughts”—putting them into words makes them sound more rigid and definitive than they are.

Japan’s proliferation of signs and symbols consists overwhelmingly of commercial advertising. And the viewing audience is not only the potential paying customer but also the neighbors, the interested, the uninterested, the whole society, and (if we consider votive tablets) the gods themselves. Advertising in Japan is a public art and a cultural force.

Underlying this art of advertising is the more basic art of calligraphy. Whether the medium is black ink or neon tubing, the aesthetics of calligraphy can move foreigners almost as deeply as Japanese. It is the beauty of the forms as much as their meaning that is appreciated. Among Japanese, an individual is still judged by the way he forms his characters. Letters from strangers are read not only for what they say but also for the way they are written. Bad writing still means a bad, or at least weak, personality. Since the Japanese typewriter remains at best a cumbersome affair and is, at any rate, never used for personal correspondence, a good, clean, even elegant hand is a requisite. Aesthetic qualifications become moral qualifications in Japan; beauty becomes honesty. A person used to be judged (cultured? well born? genteel?) by his or her calligraphy. How all this will fare in the era of the home word-processor remains to be seen.

—1974