Graphic

Kanji, the pictograms borrowed from China that comprise the bulk of the Japanese syllabary, frustrate learners of Japanese with their number and complexity, but are beautiful graphic creations, lending themselves to various exquisite calligraphic interpretations.

A striking example of this is the distinctive station signage created with duct tape by an amateur graphic artist in his sixties, Shuetsu Sato. Sato san is a railway employee who started crafting his creations to help him in his job of directing commuters through the labyrinth that is Shinjuku Station. His kanji have a bold pop sensibility, he mixes blunt edges and curved corners in his lettering, and the use of tape and working to a grid dictates the spacing of the pictograms’ forms. In addition to their beauty and artistic merits, the signs are also easily spotted and read from a distance: perfect illustrations of good signage design. In recognition, the professionals have even given his typeface a name, dubbing it Shuetsu Sans.

Chris Gaul has written a detailed piece on Sato san that contains plenty of examples of his graphic works.