4 ms·

A Look at Early Japanese Typewriters (2016)

60 points by caust1c 6y ago

TMWNN 6y ago
For more on the topic of tyewriters in non-alphabetic languages, I recommend The Chinese Typewriter (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese-typewriter https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese-typewriter) from MIT Press.
- caust1c 6y ago
  Awesome! Thanks for sharing!
- roddylindsay 6y ago
  Came to the comments to recommend this as well! Fantastic read.
  - aoki 6y ago
    +1, and I’m eagerly awaiting Mullaney’s follow-on (in progress) about post-typewriter text entry. An odd but interesting related book is Unger’s _Fifth Generation Fallacy_. If you ignore the dubious framing about 1980s Japanese AI, there’s a long discussion of kanji text entry (including computer text entry) with some kanji-specific references that _Chinese Typewriter_ necessarily skips.
supernova87a 6y ago
Very interesting, thanks for posting! Reminds me of the articles I saw about 2-3 years ago on the difficulty of creating new fonts for Asian languages compared to Roman alphabets. The sheer number of characters required to build up a base of shapes is huge, compared to our 26x2 or whatever variation on that, plus accented characters and symbols.
- knolax 6y ago
  And yet despite this, graphic design in Asian countries still manages to use a greater variety of fonts than in Western ones. For example compare this[0] advertisement for curry to this advertisement for fries[1]. [0] https://chancurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/9c0f748dfcd19d8f413988fe36d79216.png https://chancurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/9c0f748dfcd... [1] http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1965451/thumbs/o-SATISFRY-570.jpg?1 http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1965451/thumbs/o-SATISFRY-570.jpg?...
  - athenot 6y ago
    The font helps to reinforce a branding identity. This is why the fries example has a unified face. The copy is also seconday to the brand, which is the first thing the eye sees. Contrast with he curry one where the branding is taking a back seat to the messaging. These are two different styles of advertisement.
- gumby 6y ago
  Most Asian languages are alphabetic and/or syllabic (all the south Asian languages, Mongolian, Khmer, Thai, Korean, etc) quite apart from those that use the Roman alphabet like Malay. Only a few have the difficulty you describe though it Is a big one.
vharuck 6y ago
It bothers me so much that the pairing of katakana and alphabetical characters has nothing to do with pronunciation. >The positive thing about Kanji is that it allows for quite an efficient expression with more nuance. As a person only a year and a half into learning Japanese, the positive thing is clearly marking separate words and particles. Japanese only has a few unique syllables and rarely uses spaces or other separators. I've repeatedly had trouble parsing loan words written in katakana, especially when it's more than one word smushed together.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  What are you talking about? Have you used a proper Japanese input on Android or Google? They are paired, vowels first and then phonetically. On Android and iOS, あうえおい A, u, e, o, i かくけこき Ka, ku, me, ko, ki さすせそし Sa, su, se, so, shi The alphabet has no real existence in the Japanese language, it is a different language and romaji is bad to pick up, but the characters are grouped together to enable fast typing and auto detection of grammar and Kanji. -- Then with any proper keyboard, you can change the input setting so you do not need a Japanese keyboard, you can write solely phonetically via a English keyboard and have the software correct it , which I think is annoying because you have to type two keyboard inputs for one character.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    GP is referring to the first typewriter in the article, where the katakana has no relation to the English letters they share a key with.
    - junar 6y ago
      Such a mapping would not be feasible, for several reasons. * There are more kana than English letters. You can see that there are numbers paired with kana, keys in the bottom-right with two kana, and on this particular keyboard, ヲ (wo) appears to be omitted. * Broadly speaking, each kana represents a pair of sounds: one of ten consonants plus one of five vowels. You will have English consonants with no real Japanese counterpart, and Japanese consonants with fewer than five appropriate English counterparts.
gumby 6y ago
I used to see a lot of those last machines (the one with the pointer and the ray of type) back in the 80s. The blog author says he bought it off a journalist, perhaps thinking it was for foreigners. Presumably it was light because the journo needed something portable. The reason for the type case is that companies would insert the specific characters they needed to conduct their business.
ahmedfromtunis 6y ago
Obviously, I have no idea what this was used for but I expected to see a katakana/hiragana combo where one of the two alphabets is activated via a shift-like mechanism. Are such typewriters a thing?
- uranusjr 6y ago
  That’s basically how JIS works, which is the layout that dominates the market later on, and what you’d find on most PCs. The keys has hiragana on them, and a special key is used to switch input type.
asciimike 6y ago
Sort of related, but I remember visiting a ham radio store in Akihabara and finding out that Japan has its own Morse code: Wabun code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabun_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabun_code)

60 points by caust1c 6y ago

For more on the topic of tyewriters in non-alphabetic languages, I recommend The Chinese Typewriter (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese-typewriter https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chinese-typewriter) from MIT Press.

caust1c 6y ago
Awesome! Thanks for sharing!
roddylindsay 6y ago
Came to the comments to recommend this as well! Fantastic read.
- aoki 6y ago
  +1, and I’m eagerly awaiting Mullaney’s follow-on (in progress) about post-typewriter text entry. An odd but interesting related book is Unger’s _Fifth Generation Fallacy_. If you ignore the dubious framing about 1980s Japanese AI, there’s a long discussion of kanji text entry (including computer text entry) with some kanji-specific references that _Chinese Typewriter_ necessarily skips.

supernova87a 6y ago

Very interesting, thanks for posting! Reminds me of the articles I saw about 2-3 years ago on the difficulty of creating new fonts for Asian languages compared to Roman alphabets. The sheer number of characters required to build up a base of shapes is huge, compared to our 26x2 or whatever variation on that, plus accented characters and symbols.

knolax 6y ago
And yet despite this, graphic design in Asian countries still manages to use a greater variety of fonts than in Western ones. For example compare this[0] advertisement for curry to this advertisement for fries[1]. [0] https://chancurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/9c0f748dfcd19d8f413988fe36d79216.png https://chancurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/9c0f748dfcd... [1] http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1965451/thumbs/o-SATISFRY-570.jpg?1 http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1965451/thumbs/o-SATISFRY-570.jpg?...
- athenot 6y ago
  The font helps to reinforce a branding identity. This is why the fries example has a unified face. The copy is also seconday to the brand, which is the first thing the eye sees. Contrast with he curry one where the branding is taking a back seat to the messaging. These are two different styles of advertisement.
gumby 6y ago
Most Asian languages are alphabetic and/or syllabic (all the south Asian languages, Mongolian, Khmer, Thai, Korean, etc) quite apart from those that use the Roman alphabet like Malay. Only a few have the difficulty you describe though it Is a big one.

vharuck 6y ago

It bothers me so much that the pairing of katakana and alphabetical characters has nothing to do with pronunciation. >The positive thing about Kanji is that it allows for quite an efficient expression with more nuance. As a person only a year and a half into learning Japanese, the positive thing is clearly marking separate words and particles. Japanese only has a few unique syllables and rarely uses spaces or other separators. I've repeatedly had trouble parsing loan words written in katakana, especially when it's more than one word smushed together.

rootsudo 6y ago
What are you talking about? Have you used a proper Japanese input on Android or Google? They are paired, vowels first and then phonetically. On Android and iOS, あうえおい A, u, e, o, i かくけこき Ka, ku, me, ko, ki さすせそし Sa, su, se, so, shi The alphabet has no real existence in the Japanese language, it is a different language and romaji is bad to pick up, but the characters are grouped together to enable fast typing and auto detection of grammar and Kanji. -- Then with any proper keyboard, you can change the input setting so you do not need a Japanese keyboard, you can write solely phonetically via a English keyboard and have the software correct it , which I think is annoying because you have to type two keyboard inputs for one character.
- Izkata 6y ago
  GP is referring to the first typewriter in the article, where the katakana has no relation to the English letters they share a key with.
  - junar 6y ago
    Such a mapping would not be feasible, for several reasons. * There are more kana than English letters. You can see that there are numbers paired with kana, keys in the bottom-right with two kana, and on this particular keyboard, ヲ (wo) appears to be omitted. * Broadly speaking, each kana represents a pair of sounds: one of ten consonants plus one of five vowels. You will have English consonants with no real Japanese counterpart, and Japanese consonants with fewer than five appropriate English counterparts.

gumby 6y ago

I used to see a lot of those last machines (the one with the pointer and the ray of type) back in the 80s. The blog author says he bought it off a journalist, perhaps thinking it was for foreigners. Presumably it was light because the journo needed something portable. The reason for the type case is that companies would insert the specific characters they needed to conduct their business.

ahmedfromtunis 6y ago

Obviously, I have no idea what this was used for but I expected to see a katakana/hiragana combo where one of the two alphabets is activated via a shift-like mechanism. Are such typewriters a thing?

uranusjr 6y ago
That’s basically how JIS works, which is the layout that dominates the market later on, and what you’d find on most PCs. The keys has hiragana on them, and a special key is used to switch input type.

asciimike 6y ago

Sort of related, but I remember visiting a ham radio store in Akihabara and finding out that Japan has its own Morse code: Wabun code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabun_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabun_code)