Designing with Kanji: Japanese Character Motifs for Surface, Skin and Spirit

by Shogo Oketani and Leza Lowitz
Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley CA, 2003
144 pp. illus. 130 b/w. Paper, $14.95
ISBN 1-8880656-79-5.

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University, USA

mosher@svsu.edu

Westerners tend to exoticize and aestheticize Japanese writing, which has a very strong aesthetic tradition in its own cultural context. Though the technology had been around for a century, it is said that overseas Asian business in the 1980s accelerated the spread of FAX machines globally, since the calligraphy of a businessperson's signature had long been considered an important badge of integrity.

Designing with Kanji provides the ideograms for popular emblematic words like "samurai", "bushido", "Buddha nature", "compassion" and "emptiness". Each word is usually made up of two or three characters, and each character has three to a dozen precise strokes. The book explains the origin of these terms, and the combination of characters that constitute them. Several kanji styles of each word are depicted——formal, modern, flowing and stylish——which would aid their recognition by a traveler seeking them in shop signs, magazine advertisements or manga (comic books). A bibliography is provided for further study.

Much like the odd English phrases that appear on Japanese t-shirts, many Westerners have misused these emblems with sloppy calligraphy. The author tells of one American man who, because of a single slip of the brush, sported a large tattoo that said not "Wind God" as intended, but "wife". Designing with Kanji is handy and enjoyable resource to prevent just such an embarrassment.