A Semiotic Analysis of Iconicity in Japanese Manner Posters
From public announcements in France about the circus (Collins, 1985), to “unfit” posters of French dancers such as Ilka de Mynn (Carter, 2010), and artistic reminders to mind your manners in public transportation contexts (Kawakita, 2008), posters have served in unique ways to communicate to the public throughout history. My paper brings scholarly attention to a specific type of poster board persuasion in Japan that art designer and art theorist, Hideya Kawakita (2008), describes as Japanese manner posters. My first encounter with a Japanese manner poster was in Tokyo, Japan, 2009. It was my first time venturing to the biggest city in Japan. I was excited about the well-known Tokyo crowds and pace of people in the train stations. While waiting patiently in the neatly formed line of train passengers on the platform, I looked to my left and found a cartoon-like poster hanging on the wall that told me to “Not rush into the train car.”
The four posters under textual analysis are The Seat Monopolizer (1976), Mary is Tired (1977), Time for No Smoking (1982), and Clearly Show Your Train Pass (1978). These four posters are selected because of their incorporation of iconic signifiers. Iconic signifiers, as American semiotician Charles Peirce (1931) argues, resemble particular realities more closely and function at a more evocative level than other symbolic modalities. Furthermore, this paper addresses how cultural values and history, semiotic theory, and rhetorical directions intersect to create the analytical framework for the discussion of Japanese manner posters.
As French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (1978) put it, “cracking a code” behind material culture is the focus for this paper on Japanese manner posters. The long-term intention for this study is to create a model that can be applied to analyze other manner posters in other countries. Since this paper analyzes posters from a specific cultural context, the definition of material culture is adopted from Ian Woodward (2001). As Woodward explains, material culture constitutes as objects that we surround ourselves with that have greater value than strict functional utility. Manner posters are commonly found in Japanese trains, subways, and stations.
I contend that internationally recognized icons are rhetorically used as central signifiers of connection between Japan and Western cultures in the four selected manner posters. An icon is defined as a type of sign that fulfills the main function of representation (Chandler, 2007). Furthermore, Jakobson (1963) adds how a symbolic icon can be appropriately regarded as a stylized image rather than a pure portrait of a person. This kind of iconicity persuasively succeeds in securing a split second of attention from everyday commuters on Japanese trains, busses, subways, and stations. Moreover, Japanese manner posters reveal the intertextuality, or interconnection of codes that presently lack scholarly attention.
Since this paper focuses on iconicity as a dominant theme in Japanese manner posters, it is necessary to review literature on how posters are studied as forms of rhetorical direction by other scholars. In addition to manner posters as rhetoric, the literature review also examines historical exigency, cultural values, face negotiation, and semiotic theory in order to frame this analysis. Additionally, this paper will analyze how everyday posters might create reality, or the reality of how a certain world makes up a culture’s decisions about signs and signifiers in a Whorfian (1956) sense.