Japanese Customs:Why The Peace Sign?

A reader asks why the peace sign is so prevalent in photos with Japanese people in the Ask The AV Club section:

Give Peace A Chance

It seems to have subsided in recent years, however, I often wonder why Japanese people flash the "peace" sign during photographs so much. I have noticed these in photos online (not that I'm into cosplay or anything… ummm, yeah) and personally when I was in Ireland, touring various IRA/Catholic monuments where a Japanese tourist group was on the same route as me. I first thought it could be considered a commentary on the subject matter of the monuments; however, the tourists flashed the peace sign in every picture they took, regardless of the background—standing in front of a tourist shop, sitting on a bus, etc. Could this be traced to something in Japanese pop culture, much like suburban white kids throwing gang signs because of all those Tupac videos?

Paddy

Genevieve Koski says "konnichiwa," and offers this:

There are a bunch of theories as to the origin of the V sign—either a peace sign or a Winston Churchill-style victory symbol, depending on which story you go with—in Japanese culture, many of which can be found on the Wikipedia page on the subject. The most widely disseminated seems to be that when U.S. figure skater Janet Lynn fell during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, she kept smiling and flashed the peace sign even while ass-down on the ice, making her an overnight sensation in Japan. Copycats followed her lead.

There's a lot of pedantic reasoning floating around rationalizing the sign's popularity in photographs—it allows expressiveness in a notoriously reserved culture; it serves as a non-verbal "cheese," indicating readiness to be photographed; and, most oddly, that it draws attention away from the subjects' small eyes—but there seems to be a general consensus on one thing: It's deeply ingrained in the culture. Japan Today asked young Japanese people why they make the V sign, and one respondent said, "I make the peace sign but I don't know why I do it, who invented it and when we started doing this. I think I've been doing it since I was born. The peace sign gesture must have been programmed in my DNA, or foreigners mind-controlled Japanese to make the peace sign subconsciously when we pose for a photo to keep the peace after the war."

Mind control may be a bit of a stretch, but it's worth noting that the sign is extremely present in anime/manga and commercial television, no doubt aiding in its popularity among school kids. The symbol's association with these have no doubt helped link it to the concept of "kawaii," or cuteness, a prominent aspect of modern Japanese pop culture and fashion (think Hello Kitty, sailor uniforms, and pigtails)...

Comments

[John]

Looking for information and found it at this great site...

[Patrick McCoy]

Thanks, glad to be of help.

[Mel]

thank you!

[Ron]

Thank you very much for this information, I've always wondered about this.

[baer]

I must visit japan

[cake]

After I started reading manga, I started doing the peace sign more often. I just realized this now.
Manga=peace? XDDD

[taelor]

its even funnier when they do it in front of their mouth, because that symbol means something completely different to me.

[Frank]

Nice read - thank you.

[Jellyroll]

My theory is that it's nationalistic. The "counter" for long slender things (like fingers) is hon/bon/pon. So, 2 fingers is ni-hon. The Japanese word for Japan in Nihon. Case closed.

[Jordan retro 10]

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[James]

My theory is that it's nationalistic. The "counter" for long slender things (like fingers) is hon/bon/pon. So, 2 fingers is ni-hon. The Japanese word for Japan in Nihon. http://www.rapidsloth.com

[MC]

It seemed like a reasonable explanation, but now I'm not so sure.

[Japanese Translation]

Thanks for your updates .I really appreciate your work to this site. I hope you can continue this kind of good work in future also..

[Pete Tinsley]

After being the only Nation to be bombed by nuclear devices, Japan is the only Nation to have banned their use. The peace sign is symbolic of their pursuit of peace.

[kmkenpo]

Umm, about the skater (Janet Lynn) in 1972. She didn't fall and "flash the peace sign even while..." She did fall, but if you watch the recording of the time, she didn't flash a peace sign. Forgive me for being a stick-in-the-mud, but please, unless the camera angle was different from where I was sitting, I must have missed something. Somehow it screams of us Americans feeding our own egos, trying to make a claim as to where or why something started.

[MC]

Ummm kmkenpo-I did not write the article. It is from the Onion's AV Club and it has not been proved...