features

Anime-inspired personal seals make some cheer, while others cringe

0 Comments
By Philip Kendall

Personal seals, known as "inkan" or "hanko" in Japan, are used everywhere from signing for a parcel delivery to registering a marriage at city hall. Although many businesses now recognize signatures as legally binding, the vast majority of both legal and non-legal paperwork requires a person to have their own officially registered name seal.

Although it’s possible to choose the font, size of characters and even the shape of an inkan, the seals usually contain just a person’s last name. Some quirky individuals have their inkan “reversed” so that the just outline of their name’s kanji characters, rather than the characters themselves, are printed on the paper like a photo negative, but that’s usually about as creative as it gets.

To hardcore anime and manga fans, personalised seals featuring a custom-made moe-inspired character design are possibly the greatest idea ever. To others, these are nothing short of cringe-worthy and the equivalent of including hearts and smileys in your signature on a legal document.

Saitama-based E3paper launched the order-made inkan service in June this year in association with a decades-old inkan maker in Shikoku, calling it “Ita-in Do", or “painful stamp hall.” On its website - itself a colorful, moe-inspired production worthy of any anime fan’s attention - E3paper assures customers that the original inkan are now accepted in a number of private and publicly owned business and associations, and even provides a list of Japanese banks- including Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho and Mitsui Sumito- where they can be used.

The garish seals cost between 1,380-2,980 yen, and customers are invited to use the website to upload their chosen image as well as configure the style and shape of their name’s characters as they would be engraved on the seal.

Twitter users’ reactions to the new generation of seals were surprisingly positive:

“Damn it, I actually kind of want one…!”

“So when will we start seeing ita-homes? LOL”

“I wonder if I could use this to register my marriage?”

“These… are awesome!”

Although everyone was quite so keen to jump on the bandwagon, with one Twitter user suggesting that the new custom-made seals were embarrassing and a sign that “Japan is screwed…”

Source: ハムスター速報

© RocketNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


No Comment
Login to comment

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites