Are Japanese Kanji Characters Cool?

I often see young people wearing “Superdry” clothes in California. Superdry is a fashion apparel brand from the U.K. Japanese Kanji characters are often used in their designs. The company’s logo is “Superdry (極度乾燥しなさい) .“

For many Japanese, the term “Superdry” reminds us of one of the most famous beers in Japan, “Asahi Super Dry.” When I saw a guy wearing a Superdry T-shirt at the Los Angeles International Airport, I thought he worked for the Asahi Beer Company. “極度” means “super,” “乾燥” means “dry,” and”しなさい” is the imperative form of do. If I translate it into English literally, it means that you should “dry it extremely.” The sentence doesn’t make sense, but Japanese people can imagine that it’s a play on words related to Asahi Super Dry, which is the name of a Japanese beer.

Several days after I saw this guy, I learned that Superdry was a brand. I also found a retail store near my house and took a look at their products. They looked funny to me. To be honest, I didn’t think this brand looked cool because many strange Japanese Kanji characters were used in their designs. I asked some of my Japanese friends for their opinion of these products. All of them had the same idea as me. They said that the designs were funny. I have no idea how it looks to non-Japanese speakers.

I sometimes see tattoo designs with strange Japanese characters in California. For example, on the street in Berkeley, I saw a lady who had a Japanese Kanji character tattoo which was spelled wrong. I think she wanted to get a tattoo meaning “love.” “Love” in Japanese is "愛," but her character was backwards. That was awful.

I think Japanese Kanji characters look exotic to Westerners, but Japanese people don’t often use it in fashion design. Meanwhile, Japanese people like to use English in their designs. I guess native English speakers might find a lot of strange English characters in Japanese apparel. I’ll post some examples in another blog post.