"Cow Elephant Chicken Lucky Unicorn Dragon Crane Liu Shallow"
February 13th, 2005
Hanzi Smatter 一知åŠè§£ is a weblog devoted to tracking down the misuse of Chinese character in western culture.
Many of the examples – as you might expect – are tattoos, but there's no shortage of signage and commercial art that apparently deploys ridiculous combinations of Hanzi or Kanji characters for effect rather than meaning.
[Via Bump]
February 14th, 2005 at 12:55
Interesting as a reversal of Engrish, the use of Western text, without concern for the sense, in Japanese advertising and product logos (names such as Salty Cat, Human Water and Booing Fireman).
February 14th, 2005 at 23:38
Which I suppose just goes to prove that advertising people are the same the world over – never mind what you say, as long as it looks exotic.
I don't know if Japanese people use English words or letters in tattooing, though.
February 15th, 2005 at 22:43
Apparently they do. I can't find any examples online, but a Japanese poster, DaiOni, says in this discussion forum: "…kanji tattoos are seen as a little silly in japan – of course, they love seeing all the gaijin who have complete babble carved into them. On the flipside, if you go through the tattoo mags here, they are full of baka [=stupid] nihonjin with really bad engrish tattoos".
February 16th, 2005 at 00:28
Interesting. So it's not just advertising executives who are the same the world over, it's the people who they seduce into following their lead too…