Japan’s town flag typography
Town flags L-R: Taketomi (in Okinawa) shows 竹 (take); Hachijō reflects the kanji for Hachijō 八丈, arranged in the shape of a bird.
Studying Japanese is tough. There’s three written languages, one of which, kanji (the complex ideograms) can be read using both Japanese and Chinese pronunciation. Every year, the government lists nearly 2,000 essential kanji characters for all high school students to learn, without which they cannot fully comprehend a national newspaper.
To make things interesting for those folks studying the many kanji (& to pay tribute to the graphic designers who come up with this stuff), I present an extract of Pink Tentacle’s collection of Japanese town flags that ingeniously incorporate kanji in their design.
L-R: Ibaraki: Note the pigeon resembles the character for 茨 (ibara); Ōme combines the kanji 青 (ao) and plum blossom 梅 (ume) to signify 青梅 (Ōme).
Scrolling through the collection, you’ll notice many resemble the traditional monotone mon symbols (similar to a coat of arms), where birds, flowers and other natural elements abound. Sometimes you need to squint to see what they’re getting at, but it’s fascinating to think that Japanese (along with Chinese, and any other ideogram-based language) has a whole extra element to its representation. For example, the ‘take’ from Taketomi (top left) means bamboo, yet the design focusses on the shape of the character 竹, rather than the literal meaning.
On second thoughts, that could kinda work in English too, couldn’t it? The difference is that a single letter doesn’t necessarily signify a whole concept or idea, like an ideogram does… Ok, now I’m getting confused. Let’s just enjoy them on a purely aesthetic level, shall we?
L-R: Shinagawa: Reflecting the kanji for 品 (shina) - looking slightly reminiscent of the Mitsubishi logo - and one of my favourite cities, Matsumoto, where pine (matsu) needles encircle the kanji 本 (moto).
There’s 42 more flags over at Pink Tentacle; or a list of 100 flags here at Web Designer Depot.
