My wife bought some interesting fabric a few years back that she wants to make a shirt out of. It appears to be Japanese / Chinese writing, in red, on a black background, but she’s not sure which way to orient the fabric.
I put a photo of the writing (it’s 1,000 pixels wide) on my website (www.planetpeschel.com) that can be reached below:
It’s definitely Japanese, and it is oriented right-way-up. It looks too antique for someone of my skills to read, but I’ll bet there are a few dopers who could take a reasonable shot at it.
The one in the upper left is obviously a pictograph of Cthulhu. Wearing it will mark you as one of His acolytes.
Seriously, it looks odd, not like kanji at all. The one directly below it also looks weird, like it was upside down. The one to the right of those and about halfway between looks a bit scribbly but okay. I’m not sure what the ones on the far, far left are supposed to be. The vertical line about a third in is Japanese kana, although it is very cursivelike.
No, they are right side up. They are fairly stylized, though, so they look out of balance.
But there do appear to be different writing styles involved, which makes me wonder if all the text is related. The four symbols inside a square are probably someone’s name, or the name of the shop where this was produced.
It’s certainly a mix of styles- you have a name seal, some calligraphy (which is often stylized to the point that nobody can read it) and what does indeed look like seal script. I recognize a few characters here and there, but nothing coherent. Given the mix of styles, I’d venture that it is almost certainly gibberish.
No. The Japanese have been faking it all this time. Their newspapers are plagiarized from old Leningrad phone books and their novels are reconstructed from Chinese restaurant take-out menus.
It’s not oriented properly. Well, parts of it are, and parts are not. Some are upside down and/or mirror images (left hand side). There are some name chops. It’s jibberish from a Chinese perspective. My limited Japanese also pegs it as a mish-mash of jibberish.