If you passed through one of London’s transport hubs this week you might have been handed a T-shirt by a sweet-looking Japanese woman. Adorned with Japanese characters, the tops are rather fetching. So you might have put it on, feeling trendy, well-travelled, cultured.
Any Japanese reader would think otherwise: the shirts carry phrases with meanings such as “My girlfriend is unfaithful” and “Ignorant English using Japanese to appear sophisticated”.
They have been made to coincide with an exhibition by three Japanese artists at Mark Jason, a London gallery. Their purpose? Payback. In Japan, English phrases imprinted on consumer goods have long been fashionable — although invariably bizarrely expressed. I had a pair of nail clippers that read “I like to sing in a romantic scene, it perfectly fits my private time”. How we expats laughed.
Now we are reaping the whirlwind. Because these T-shirts are just the start. Japanese written characters are insinuating themselves on to our bags, our baseball caps, our clothing even, via tattoos, our skin. To understand them, you would need to know 2,600 Japanese characters, which vary in meaning. So be careful.