Dainippon Type Organization: Fun With Japanese Characters

20 Apr 2007 Category: Features, Graphics, Japan, Typography

Dainippon Type Organization: Fun With Japanese Characters

"Toypography!": The PingMag logo, made with Dainippon Type Organization's hand-made wood blocks.

There is this one amazing group most of Tokyo’s creators are familiar with: the Dainippon Type Organization breaks Japanese Katakana, Hiragana, and the alphabet into pieces to recompose the parts and produce new characters - like turning Katakana in Kanji looking characters and the other way round. As this special Organization is an experimental typography unit founded by the two artists Tetsuya Tsukada and Hidechika in 1993. You can’t help getting excited when you look at any of their typography works, noticing each character’s interesting features - let alone the witty guys who are behind it. Now, let’s have fun with the Dainippon Type Organization giving us a lesson in Japanese semiotics!

Written by Chiemi
Translated by Junko

Info: the Japanese language consists of 2 alphabets, Hiragana and Katakana (It’s like capital letters and small letters in English). But we also have characters called Kanji for the Chinese characters.

Hiragana for a-i-u-e-o. There are more than 40 hiragana letters…

Katakana: these are the ones for a-i-u-e-o as well. There are also more than 40 Katakana letters.

Kanji: there are a thousands of Kanji characters and each character has some kind of meaning. From the left, “eye, tree, bird, hand, mountain”.

OK, would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Tsukada & Hidechika: Characters are our longtime good friends. We are the Dainippon Type Organization!

What would you call yourself?

Tsukada: A union member.

You look alike a little bit, I think. I couldn’t tell which one’s which when I met you for the first time, to tell the truth….

Hidechika: We ourselves get confused sometimes too! We used to be much more alike, but I’ve gained weight, so…

Tsukada: The shapes of our foreheads are different! I have a forehead like Mt. Fuji. And also our names are on our faces…

What do you mean…?


Tetsuya Tsukada

Hidechika

A picture written on Tetsuya Tsukada’s business card: each part in his face, like eyes, nose, and mouth, is drawn by using the letters of his first name, Tetsuya, written in Hiragana. The right eye and nose reads “Te”, the left eye is “Tsu”, and the mouth is “Ya”. Great job!

You might not be familiar with Hiragana, but still you can figure out some letters: a depiction on Hidechika’s business card with his name written in Hiragana - Hi-De-Chi-Ka - thereby composing the face.

Tsukada: We call them portrait character.

I see…! How did you two meet first? It seems you’ve been together for a long time…

Tsukada: We’ve been friends for almost one third of our lives now. We met in a graphic department of Tama Art University, and formed this organization in 1993 right after our graduation.

Would you recall your first encounter?

Tsukada: You know what, there are many unexpected things in your life…

Hidechika: Ah… basically I jumped in his grade.

We don’t really hear of jumping in another grade in Japan, but anyway… I heard actually your graduation exhibition made you think of forming the Dainippon Type Organization?

Hidechika: Yap. I was working as a chairman of a committee on the exhibition.

You must have been the best student then!

Tsukada: Well, that was probably because he was slightly older than everyone else…


The poster for the graduation exhibition: the combination of “Tamabi Graph Sotsuten Laforet” written in Katakana, in green next to it, makes a look of four Kanji. “Sotsuten” means “final show”.

Hidechika: I needed to make a poster for the graduation exhibition and was playing with characters on paper. At some point, I realized that the combination of Ta-ma-bi, an abbreviation of the university’s name, written in Katakana actually also looks like a Kanji set, meaning “festival.” Then, I turned the Katakana written “Tamabi Graph Sotsuten Laforet” into four new Kanji characters. This happened to be the starting point of the Dainippon Type Organization. The previous year’s committee made a similar poster using English characters. However, I was already tired of that kind of stuff and wanted to go with Japanese characters - because we ARE Japanese! Luckily it also turned out to be really fun, too!

What did you do after that historical discovery?

Hidechika: We put those posters around Harajuku station, handed out flyers, and made a banner for the Laforet building. We really enjoyed the process of converting Kanji to Katakana and then recompose it to make completely different characters which look like Kanji. So we wanted to do more!

I see. So, what made you choose your name, Dainippon Type Organization?

Tsukada: There was already a group called Tokyo Type Director’s Club (TDC). We wanted to do something bigger, therefore we wanted a name that sounded bigger… “Dai-Nippon” really sounds larger than “Tokyo,” and “Organization” also sounds larger than “Club,” right?

I guess so. Did people commission you right after you started working together then?

Hidechika: Of course, NO!

Tsukada: That’s why we often sent out our work to competitions. The Tokyo Art Directors Club (ADC) only accepts projects that have clients. However, the TDC usually accepts independent works, too, so we always send our pieces to them. One of our works had been selected for their yearbook before.

“Typoface” is the first of the Organization’s work selected by the TDC in 1993. It looks like the parts table of Kanji, but it is actually a Japanese Katakana table.

Here is a different version of “Typoface, Proverb series”. The far left is written in Katakana: “Inu-mo-arukeba-bo-ni-ataru”, which translates into “Never go looking for trouble. Or seek and you shall find.”

Character play: at first sight, this looks like the Kanji “Zai,” meaning existence. But you can make out “Nike”, too, written in Japanese Katakana by forming that one character.

This means “Coke”.

Your works are really interesting to us as Japanese, but I really worry that how we can explain this to foreigners…

Tsukada: You must think so! But in fact, our work got attention in other countries too! After this TDC yearbook, a friend of ours said, “Hey, I saw your work in a very cool book! Looked great!” And I was checking this very cool book and saw something quite familiar… our work!


This is the ‘very cool book’: “Sneakers, isn’t everything”.

Oh my god it’s really here!

They used your work without permission!? Didn’t you get angry?? Did you!?

Tsukada: We weren’t sure what to do then… but we also created that work without permission from Nike and Coca-Cola, so… What can we say? Ha ha. Actually, we now thank them for doing it because we received appreciation by people from Nike, and it gave us a chance to work with them later.

Hidechika: Afterwards we got calls from people like Club King and GAS, and gradually we got commissioned for more jobs.

It sounds that it didn’t take that long for you to get what you have now?

Hidechika & Tsukada: Not at all!

Tsukada: It was just in the last 2 or 3 years that we received requests from many places. We had long hard days, like if we were young struggling comedians… We did many things like this…

“Kata- Hira” is made by the two overlapping characters of Katakana and Hiragana.

Here is an alphabet font. However, it only displays its pronunciation. When pressing “A”, its sound “E-i” will be displayed in Katakana.

This is a “Katakana Box”. You can lay out characters onto big paper and assemble it to a three dimensional piece.

Here is the alphabet version. “It was difficult to produce characters like ‘S’ or ‘N’ because they are symmetrical,” he says.

You told me earlier that there was another event which became a turning point for you?

Tsukada: We attended a Japanese design exhibition in Barcelona and at the same time, we had an exhibition in a small gallery in London. In Barcelona there was a talk show with Groovisions, Namaiki, Power Graphixx and Delaware, and we were asked to talk on stage as well….

Hidechika: It was like a secret live show!

Sounds cool…

Tsukada: However, the person before us talked a bit too long, so we had to finish our presentation within 10 or 20 minutes. That’s why we made it really simple and quick. I think it worked even better because people seemed to like it, and a curator got interested in our works. We then told them that we would love to do something in Barcelona the following year - and it came true with an exhibition. It is all published as a pictorial record of the gallery. Also, it is the 10th anniversary book of our Organization.

TYPE CARD is a memorial card of both the exhibition in Barcelona and the Organization’s 10th anniversary. The explanation is written in English, Spanish, and Catalans.

What an unexpected surprise for you. From there, you made your way to the “AN note” project with Kokuyo and the project for the personal Hanko, the Japanese stamp signature?

“AN note” produced by Kokuyo, a project for designing different notebooks. No need to add that Dainippon Type Organization used characters for that too.

Close up: since this is a notebook for practicing English, the uniquely designed Kanji for “English” is printed on the cover and inside, too. They designed a few more varieties of notebooks, which are also for sale.

This is their personal Hanko project called “Type Organization’s conspiracy.” Their method: writing a person’s name in Katakana first and then putting them together to completely different Chinese characters.

Hidechika: Once we made this personal Hanko for someone called Takahashi. Because of his name, we immediately thought of Takahashi Meijin, a famous Nintendo game player. So we made a Hanko with Kanji looks like “Meijin” out of his name Takahashi in Katakana. He really liked it and brought his big brother the following day, asking us to make another seal for him. So we made a different version for him. Next day, to my surprise, he brought his girlfriend, too! Her name is Sugimoto and this is the one we made for her.

The personal Hanko for Mr. Takahashi (left). Because his name reminded them of Takahashi Meijin (Meijin means “master”), they made a Kanji for “master” together with his surname “Takahashi” in Katakana. The one for his brother (center) says “big brother” in Kanji, but also made out with the same surname “Takahashi” in Katakana. The Type Organization used the same characters, of course, since the brothers had the same family name. However, the output was completely different! The right is the one for Takahashi’s girlfriend, Miss Sugimoto, and it says “master” in Kanji. The Organization don’t take any orders any more, by the way!

Such an interesting idea must be in danger of being copied. Have you seen anything that looks like that so far?

Hidechika: This is not our work… a bad sample, I would say. Some characters are left out …All characters should be used!

This is a fan that Hidechika got in town. They probably wanted to make one Kanji out of the 7 Katakana letters “Ku-ra-i-ma-ku-u-ru”, but it looks like they didn’t manage… and obviously Hidechika isn’t very happy about their unprofessional work either.

Now, would you talk about your masterpiece, “Toypography.” It was really popular at the last Design Tide.


It is “Toypography” with wood blocks. You can make many different letters and also meanings with the same blocks. For example, you can make several versions, such as BIRD, FISH, BEAR…

Tsukada: By assembling these wood blocks, you can make many different characters of the same meaning. Those blocks were made for a feature article called “No fun, no design” of the Design Quarterly magazine. Then, the Japanese stationary maker Kokuyo wanted us to make them into proper products. Let’s begin with “FISH”, for example.

“FISH” turns into…

“Sa”

“Sa-shi-mi” for sliced raw fish? No, that’s wrong.

It was supposed to become the word “Sa-Ka-Na” for “fish” in Hiragana, wasn’t it?

Tsukada: Not today. It becomes a Kanji for “fish”, though.

“Sakana” meaning “fish”. Yay!

Can you assemble the blocks to any picture you like?

Hidechika: Yes. How about a squid?

I want to see a “fish”! …like flatfish.

Hidechika: OK!

Flatfish?

Tsukada: Doesn’t this look more like an angelfish?


The two seem to be completely forgetting the fact that they are being interviewed… having so much fun together…

A chameleon came out from the “fish” blocks!

You really made so much good stuff! And even nicer that you can truly enjoy playing with it yourselves. It must inspire children’s creativity, as well. What are your future plans?

Hidechika: My dream is to be an artist who can host the dinner show.

Tsukada: I want to have a lunch meeting.

Lunch meeting??? I’d better get going and leave you guys alone because you are having too much fun with the blocks… Thank you very much for today!

38 Comments

  1. As a foreigner, I am definitely interested in Tetsuya’s and Hidechika’s work. What really is nice about are the creative range of ideas on how to make variations on characters- it is inspiring. How to make something long known and traditional to be playful, new and contemporary… Well done! But hey, these guys know what they are doing anyway but I just wanna say お祝い
    (if not the correct characters I am sorry) ;D

    Posted by: ANIKO on April 20th, 2007 at 8:14 pm

  2. Oh yes and I almost forgot how cute they are as well… ;)

    Posted by: ANIKO on April 20th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

  3. [...] unit founded by the two artists Tetsuya Tsukada and Hidechika in 1993. The group finds fun in breaking Japanese Katakana, Hiragana, and the alphabet into pieces to recompose the parts and produc…. Share [...]

    Posted by: Global Voices Online » Japan: Fun With Japanese Characters on April 21st, 2007 at 12:01 am

  4. Those designs are awesome.

    Posted by: HDR Photography on April 21st, 2007 at 8:10 am

  5. Oh my GOD! THIS IS JUST SO AWESOME AND COOL ARTICLE! love it! Very Inspirational and Creative!!!

    Posted by: Totoro on April 21st, 2007 at 11:22 pm

  6. Very nice interview!! Really interesting read. So cool to see the true passion those guys have, making amazing things out of those blocks despite all the biznizz success.

    Posted by: David Lang on April 22nd, 2007 at 5:16 am

  7. Very impressive! For years I have been interested in typography, and the interim pastor at our church once worked with autistic children in Japan. Are those wooden blocks available commercially?

    Posted by: James Vipond on April 22nd, 2007 at 6:09 am

  8. Very interesting. I want my personal hanko, now. Also reminded me of a Chinese artist, Xu Bing, who does interesting play on Chinese characters.

    Posted by: jugle on April 22nd, 2007 at 10:19 am

  9. [...] PingMag did an interview with Dainippon Type Organization. [...]

    Posted by: Via Alley blog » Blog Archive » Dainippon Type Organization on April 22nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm

  10. These guys are cute and so creative. Nice article. I just drew my face using katakana—its fun!

    Posted by: jose on April 22nd, 2007 at 4:02 pm

  11. beautifur!

    Posted by: 100kr on April 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 pm

  12. It’s fantastic to turn the Japanese words into various Chinese characters with brand-new meanings ~ Good job!!

    Posted by: tunokuda on April 23rd, 2007 at 12:50 am

  13. That is so cool. I’ve studied Japanese for 20 years now, and I’m always amazed by the cool things you can do with the language, but those two take the cake! Honto ni subarashii.

    Posted by: Steven Kempton on April 26th, 2007 at 7:23 am

  14. [...] [...]

    Posted by: “Toypography” - Distributing Creativity in Toys | Ponoko - Blog on April 26th, 2007 at 11:47 am

  15. how do i get a package of those wood-blocks?

    Posted by: pete on April 29th, 2007 at 4:32 am

  16. According to Kokuyo, Toypography (Wooden blocks) is not sold on internet at the moment but is sold at Tokyu Hands Shinjuku. (TEL:03-5361-3111)

    Posted by: chiemi on May 1st, 2007 at 12:21 pm

  17. The History of Kendo
    Cameron Fitzgerald
    The kendo is composed of two kanji because one stands for sword, and the other one stands for the way or path. Together the period is the way of the blade, which means sword the blade. It’s a martial arts custom made by the customary schools. The only swordsmanship of a very old Japan was skillful by a large bushi or samurai class.
    As a skillful thought real blades is naturally dangerous to all of the schools of Japan. Plus the schools discovered a dummy blade naturally dangerous. The schools discovered a model blade called a juko and a set of defensive gear called bogu, which defends the head wrist chest and groin.

    Posted by: Anonymous on May 2nd, 2007 at 6:43 am

  18. [...] from PingMag [...]

    Posted by: The Serif - Your daily dose of design inspiration - The Serif on May 2nd, 2007 at 9:15 pm

  19. Nice article. I met these guys a couple of times and it’s really great to see their everlasting enthusiasm for characters.
    BUT:
    “Info: the Japanese language consists of 2 alphabets, Hiragana and Katakana (It’s like capital letters and small letters in English).”
    Sorry, but this is a very bad explaination. Neither are they “alphabets” nor are Hiragana and Katakana in any way comparable to capital letters and small letters in English. Come on, I know you know better.

    Posted by: The Good & The Bad on May 7th, 2007 at 8:54 pm

  20. [...] PingMag This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 10:19 pm and is filed under 人物/ People. You [...]

    Posted by: Type is Beautiful » Blog Archive » 大日本字体组合 on May 8th, 2007 at 6:21 am

  21. I’m surprised that no one hasn’t pointed it out too. Instead of using “alphabet” to describe, you guys should have used “wrting system.” Hiragana and Katakana are each different writing system btw.
    AND! you guys have a typo! It’s Type Directors Club… not Typo Directors Club. How ironic, that’s little offensive, kinda funny tho.
    I guess no one gives a shit since its web (could be safari?) but I thought I would mention about the horrible rivers in some justified text in the interviews.
    yes im a type nerd.
    Great article tho!! their work is very idiosyncratic!!

    Posted by: Yuko on May 10th, 2007 at 10:34 am

  22. [...] Interview with Tetsuya Tsukada and Hidechika from Dainippon Type Organization, creators of Toypography. Via PingMag. [...]

    Posted by: Pocketnoodle » Blog Archive » Linked in - 26.05.07 on May 28th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

  23. [...] *Interview with Tetsuya Tsukada and Hidechika from Dainippon Type Organization, creators of Toypography [...]

    Posted by: Typo ! Spiekermann gives us the business « mon petit web - chindogu on June 8th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

  24. Toypography (Wooden blocks) is now available at Aoyama Book Centre in Aoyama.
    Aoyama Book Centre
    5-53-67 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo
    TEL:03-5485-5511

    Posted by: chiemi on June 16th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

  25. [...] Ver entrevista [...]

    Posted by: Elisava Escuela Superior de Diseño - Postgrado en Diseño y Dirección de Arte » Toypography on June 26th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

  26. Very inspiring! And also very creative. I love their face drawing in Hiragana. I’ll try that out some time. ^-^ Its amazing how they play around with the characters and come up with something edgy and contemporary. Really inspires me to master Kanji and play around with the words. Thanks PingMag for this amazing article and also keep up the creative work, Dainippon Type Organization!

    Posted by: razori on September 29th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

  27. 真的很棒！日本果然有这样得天独厚的条件，既有汉字又有假名。幸好我会一点英语，也会一点日本语，虽然作为一个外国人，学的都不是很好，但是仍然能感受到很强的艺术魅力。
    喜欢字体设计的朋友，可以给我发email:wangyusheng2006@163.com

    Posted by: 小雨 on October 5th, 2007 at 11:04 am

  28. The Dainippon Type duo rocks! And they will be judging at our contest on Nov. 3 in Tokyo.
    Those of you in Japan - come say hi. Those who arent - check the webcast.
    http://www.cutandpaste.com

    Posted by: Pasha on October 26th, 2007 at 11:51 am

  29. Awesome stuff

    Posted by: Okinawa Travel on November 24th, 2007 at 6:08 am

  30. Personally, i think their works is very original. Very experimental. I love typography. i love them!!!

    Posted by: chinthye on December 17th, 2007 at 11:12 am

  31. Very impressive work. Creative and open mind is requirement of every designer.

    Posted by: Yuu on January 6th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

  32. omju jgtc bjkvh jvyu

    Posted by: kickoma on January 17th, 2008 at 10:18 am

  33. WOW!Big Respect to Dainippon Type Organization….

    Posted by: Eko Pratomo on May 26th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

  34. king of the streets

    Posted by: Anonymous on June 4th, 2008 at 1:19 am

  35. [...] PingMag This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 10:19 pm and is filed under 亚洲/ Asia, [...]

    Posted by: Type is Beautiful » Blog Archive » 大日本字体组合 on June 4th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

  36. [...] now will do but a off the top of my head list of my fave PINGS are pingmag.jp/2008/12/22/nakagin/ pingmag.jp/2007/04/20/dainippon-type-organization/ pingmag.jp/2006/07/03/dry-cleaning-typography/ pingmag.jp/2008/12/17/toto/ [...]

    Posted by: Superlocal » Blog Archive » sad news on January 5th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

  37. Great work as always!

    Posted by: japan pictures on May 16th, 2009 at 8:45 am

  38. [...] Dainippon Type Organization has interesting projects that experiments with Japanese typography, some of them combining hirgana and katakana. overlaping katakana with hiragana [...]

    Posted by: Countdown Ideas « timebased1 blog on November 1st, 2009 at 1:42 pm

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