The language of shop signs in Tokyo

Abstract

A report on the salient role of English in Japan's complex commercial signs. A 1989–1990 study by the National Language Research Institute found that loanwords comprise nearly 10% of Japanese language in current use, and most of these loanwords are from English. Loanword dictionary entries continue to grow: the latest katakana dictionary published by Sanseido (2000) contains 52,500 foreign word entries.