This stylish black on black Japanese kanji shirt is sure to put you on the best dressed list. I’ve seen every kanji fabric print made in the last decade, and this one stands out in its simple elegance. The Japanese calligraphy falls effortlessly across the print, punctuated occasionally by kanji in black and beige. Accented with real wood buttons.

We’re carrying it in 3 different colors – black, blue and dark red - because I couldn’t choose between them – will you have an easier time picking out your favorite?

Made in the USA

 

A really long description of this shirt: “You classify this shirt as Japanese Kanji, but you have another style you refer to as Chinese calligraphy. Why are you bothering to differentiate? How can I tell the difference?”

 

Well, we differentiate out of respect, oh, and to prevent a flood of emails from customers who can tell the difference.

Anyhow, one of us at Robots in Orbit studied Japanese for a while, and it’s fairly easy to tell it apart from Chinese – both languages use kanji, those single symbols that may represent a syllable or an entire word, but only Japanese also has hiragana and katakana mixed in. Hiragana and katakana are 2 “alphabets” were each symbol represents a single consonant-vowel combination. Hiragana is used to represent native Japanese words, while katakana is used for words adopted from other languages.The symbols for hiragana and katakana are simpler and so easier to spot amongst the complex kanji.

 

So our black shirt features darker black, large Japanese script in the foreground and charcoal grey, smaller Japanese script in the background.Singular beige kanji stand out like a Chinese chop mark.A Chinese chop is a stamp – typically carved from soft rock and most frequently it is your name.Chinese chop prints in gold decorate our Chinese Calligraphy shirt as well.

 

Now I’ve let it slip that one of us studied Japanese but if you’re expecting us to translate this for you – well, no way!