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Ironically, come over to Japan and you will hardly see a single sign typeset in Choc, or any of the popular wonton fonts[1], anywhere. This is despite the fact

Ironically, come over to Japan and you will hardly see a single sign typeset in Choc, or any of the popular wonton fonts[1], anywhere. This is despite the fact Latin text is very commonly used in JP storefronts as decorative elements. The collective impressions around those fonts represent a westerner's orientalist stereotype of the East, not of the actual East. To an Asian native, it comes off as cheesy as hell. I usually find most complaints of cultural appropriation frivolous; go ahead and dress up as ninjas or wear kimonos all you like, we don't care! But this in particular keeps bugging me somewhat, as hardly anyone - even the writer of this article - seems to care about that angle much. Even in the logo for Disney's Big Hero 6[2], which I assume was supposed to be Disney's love letter to JP pop culture, wonton font influences die hard. (At least they de-wontonned the logo for the Japanese release, retitled as "Baymax."[3]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font [2] https://vgboxart.com/resources/logo/8390_big-hero-6-prev.png https://vgboxart.com/resources/logo/8390_big-hero-6-prev.png [3] http://www.lightweight.tokyo/3ds/baymax_hero/images/catch/logo.png http://www.lightweight.tokyo/3ds/baymax_hero/images/catch/lo...

LeonidasXIV 8y ago
Of course the lettering in Japan is not set in faux-asian typesetting since you already have real-asian typesetting everywhere else. Latin typesetting is mostly added to add a sense of occident stereotypes (to the point where the latin writing makes little to no sense, similarly how Superdry's Japanese slogan makes no sense to Japanese speakers), writing it in a brush stroke would defeat the purpose of such styling. This is also why you don't see fake-cyrillic writing in any country using cyrillic because it is just odd and meaningless to readers to these scripts.

LeonidasXIV 8y ago

Of course the lettering in Japan is not set in faux-asian typesetting since you already have real-asian typesetting everywhere else. Latin typesetting is mostly added to add a sense of occident stereotypes (to the point where the latin writing makes little to no sense, similarly how Superdry's Japanese slogan makes no sense to Japanese speakers), writing it in a brush stroke would defeat the purpose of such styling. This is also why you don't see fake-cyrillic writing in any country using cyrillic because it is just odd and meaningless to readers to these scripts.