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JapaneseCulture

The peace sign – The V sign

Why do Japanese do the “peace sign” when photographed? After asking many people like for example Dannychoo(Who talks today about the same thing), and reading many stuff; these are the “peace sign” reasons/origins from my point of view:

  • After the Second World War they copied the sign from the USA soldiers maybe because they thought it was cool. The soldiers were using it as a “V”ictory sign, but the Japanese were using it as a “peace sign”.
  • During the seventies it started being used when photographed because an American figure skater fell during the Sapporo Olympic games and was photographed/featured on different Japanese media where she was always doing the V sign. Japanese liked it and started imitating her.
  • During the last decade music groups like Morning Musume and other similar ones used the V sign a lot and started changing/morphing it in different ways, and people copied that too. Nowadays there are many V style signs, you can do it vertical, horizontal, near your eyes, near you mouth… Usually the same person makes his own V sign style and uses it always when he has to pose for a picture.
  • “Making your own V sign” is a trend that is extending to China and Korea

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Osaka

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This is the Mourning Musume group, notice how each girl has her own V sign style. Some of them are not even V.

31 replies on “The peace sign – The V sign”

It’s mostly used by girls I think. All korean girls do this when taking pictures (I mean, when someone takes a picture of a girl not the girl doing it while taking the picture (Although I think it’s also possible 🙂 ).

After reading these comments, I think you need to add one more reason to your list: Japanese girls are quite inteligent, they know you guys think that is cute, so,,, they keep doing it.

Get a grip. You are so sheltered. The symbol is used by the next generation of lesbians to pronounce that they are gay if proud of it,

Nowadays, it seems the Japanese just do it because everyone else is, like its the “normal way” to take a picture….it sometimes annoys me to see tho…I mean, you cant you do some other hand gesture instead of the v-sign as soon as you see someone’s camera???

That Morning Musume picture is from around 2003. Of the 12 girls shown only 2 are still in the group. But another 7 have joined since then. And they all still do V signs! 🙂

Being a foreigher in Japan I can assure you that both girls and boys do it, no real difference there, although girls might be more prone to appearing in and taking photos. Anyways, this V-sign business really disturbs me since you can never document reality with the japanese. I’m trying to take natural photos of my friends here but within the fraction of a second after seeing my camera all hands are in the air sporting V-signs. Besides depriving me of capturing real life it also gets to me because they distance themselves from being personal and individual and instead turn themselves into this generic japanese mold. This might actually serve the desired purpose of not taking too much space and being too bold. My grim judgement is that the japanese suffer a hideous complex on many levels. Although they have a rich cultural heritage they’re mooching off of western culture and therefore find themselves being imitations of western societies like the US and GB. In many ways it is true that the japanese pop culture is a mishmash of confusing grotesque exaggerations of western culture and that they’re still trying to find themselves in this modernized world which just recently was handed to them (after WWII).

ok, seriously man. KAWAI!?!?
dont say that word unless its in a sentance where ALL of the words are japanese.

dont be a wannabe, LEARN THE LANGUAGE.

http://www.japaneselearning.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8&Itemid=27

start there

i learned the language there, its easier than you expect
and please dont acuse me of hating, it just pisses me off to see that the way of the /b/tard is used by people who dont even know what /b/ is. just dont act like that, saying kawai and stuff, or else your no worse than the ****ing cancer killing the internet (/b/tards)
look it up, IF YOU DARE (not work, home, anywhere safe. not for children, seniors, or anyone between the ages of 0 and 500000000000etc.)

wow, i was dissing a guy who posted a comment 2 yeard ago…

it must be late (1:37AM and stuff)

woot, hooray for pie.
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ultimate–/

Even if it was elected officials who decided to do shock therapy and other Chicago prescriptions, the not-subtle pressure was from Chicagoan institutions. ,

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