All of Japan’s 47 Prefectures Captured In Expressive Typography

all images courtesy the artist

How well do you know your Japanese prefectures? A Japanese art student has created a fun and beautiful guide to all 47 of them, using expressive typography to render the kanji characters of each so that they visualize the one thing that prefecture is known for. To get you started, the top left is Tottori (鳥取) known for its sand dunes. The bottom left is Ehime (愛媛) known for its mandarin oranges. How many do you know?

The fantastic series was created last year by an art student specializing in typography who goes by the name yunateya (ゆうなてや). In creating the series, she explains that she wasn’t able to travel during the pandemic so decided to travel vicariously through her artwork. The series is a great reminder of how unique and diverse Japan can be, and really makes us want to travel again as soon as it’s safe!

You can keep up with the artist on Twitter or Instagram.

From around 1868 to 1871, several waves of territorial consolidation created what are today’s 47 prefectures. They include 43 proper prefectures (県, ken), two urban prefectures (府, fu: Osaka and Kyoto), one “territory” (道, dō: Hokkaido) and one metropolis (都, to: Tokyo).

1 Comment

  1. Thank you! These are beautiful, and so visually expressive of each prefecture. What a creative, clever work of art!

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