Kotobazawari: The Texture of Words

Words function not only to convey meaning and concepts, but also to transmit the textures of our world. Kotobazawari is an attempt to explore words with physicality—expressing our bodily sensations that change with time and society through words not yet found in dictionaries, and seeking language that can move reality.

Words seem to flood our world as never before. With advances in digital technology and the proliferation of media, countless people can now send their words into the world, and the vibrant discussions happening globally surely hold great significance.

On the other hand, encountering words like ronpa (crushing an argument) gives the impression that discussions have become a competition of verbal techniques. Rather than using pens instead of swords, it sometimes feels as though we wield pens as swords—or even launch them through the air like missiles.

Yet words are not merely abstract tools for conveying meaning and concepts—they also exist in continuity with our physical bodies and environments. If we seek an embodied language where the texture of the world and the texture of words don’t drift apart but resonate as closely as possible, perhaps more words will emerge that directly touch our senses and move reality in concrete ways.

── Putting the Texture of the Times into Words

One way to bring the texture of the world and the texture of words closer together is to try putting the texture of the times into words. Take the word jishin (earthquake). Along with understanding the meaning through the kanji combination of characters meaning “earth” and “shake,” the sound of the word itself makes the phenomenon of violently trembling ground arise as a sensation. But what about yoshin (meaning “aftershock”)? The connection between “remainder” and “shake” is hard to instantly imagine, and given the gap between the soft-sounding yoshin and the actual phenomenon, many people may find it difficult to feel a strong sense of caution when hearing the word. What if we called them zokushin (“continuing quakes”) or zokuzokushin (“successive quakes”) instead? Wouldn’t the voiced consonants resonate more with our bodily senses, evoke memories from within us, and more readily summon that urgent feeling that we need to stay alert?

The title “WHO ARE WE” for the National Museum of Nature and Science’s 2021 exhibition, for which Misawa Design Institute handled the planning and composition with copywriting contributions, is another example of words created from this perspective. This traveling exhibition displayed mammal specimens selected from the museum’s vast collection of approximately 4.9 million items, but at the time of its opening, the world was in the midst of the pandemic. It was also a period when people worldwide were beginning to grasp the major themes of humanity’s connection with nature and Earth as their own problem, made palpable by our encounter with the virus. What kind of words could reach people’s minds and bodies in such a situation? Perhaps the consciousness of “We,” which had been limited to humans, was expanding to include other animals and living organisms. We discussed this hypothesis within the team and chose “WHO ARE WE” as the exhibition title. Over 150,000 people visited this relatively small exhibition, certainly due in part to our choice of title. Rather than calling it “a mammal specimen exhibition,” we chose words that captured the deep, urgent sensibility that people living through that period were experiencing.

── Putting Individual Sensations into Words

In contrast to words that trace the texture of an era’s broader framework, words connected to individual impressions also have the potential to bring the texture of the world and words closer together. For example, one section of the “WHO ARE WE” exhibition has the subtitle “Gurunyorotsun.” This word replaces a long explanation in just seven characters: “Horns are protrusions above flesh with various roles and forms. Bovine horns, for instance, have bone cores covered by hard skin that has been keratinized; they are found in both males and females and grow throughout life without branching. Goat subfamily horns are essentially triangular pyramids that deform through differential growth at three points. Deer have branched antlers... and so on.” Working together with the art director to make museum exhibition captions—which tend to become overly conceptual—more approachable, we carefully observed the diverse shapes and forms of animal horns and condensed them into an onomatopoeia that mimics their appearances and states. While this alone cannot convey everything, we received many positive responses from both children and adults who visited the exhibition. We feel we were able to intuitively communicate biodiversity, spark people’s curiosity, and create a gateway to more detailed knowledge.

Even before the modern era, there were masters of language who achieved kotobazawari. Poet and fairy tale writer Kenji Miyazawa’s unpyosen (meaning “cloud horizon”) is one expression that skillfully brings together the texture of a subject’s state and the texture of words. This word appears in a passage from his poetry collection Spring and Asura, but it is not an established word found in standard dictionaries. We can imagine that when viewing the boundary between sky and clouds, or landscapes where clouds spread endlessly, he felt a sensation that metaphors like “cloud boundary” or “cloud waterline” couldn’t fully capture, so he created his own word to express what he experienced. Miyazawa also made numerous attempts to express sensations that existing words couldn’t capture through original onomatopoeia like doddodo dodoudo dodoudo dodou, kapukapu, and hyui hyui. In our present and coming era, where prompts can instantly create average, error-free text, won’t it become even more important to constantly question whether our words truly express our own sensations—and, when necessary, convey emotions and thoughts through new words we might call “personal language”?

── Putting Unknown Sensations into Words

Words don’t just articulate sensations we’re already conscious of—they can also become triggers for recognizing sensations we haven’t clearly been aware of until now. For example, “translation” is the act of conveying information from a source language into another language as accurately as possible, but there’s also the practical difficulty of converting meaning between languages with different cultural backgrounds without the slightest deviation. This is especially true when translating literary language like poetry and novels, or words meant to convey emotions and passion beyond logic, such as corporate or brand philosophy. What’s required here is to recreate words so that the sensation and impact in the original can be felt in the other language as well. What if we called this a hiyaku (“leap translation”)? The image of the homophone hiyaku (leap) overlaps to evoke creative translation, and we could even turn hiyakuka (“leap translator”) into a unique profession. For those who have already been practicing this, it could bring renewed self-awareness and pride.

“I LaLaLa YOU” is also a phrase that aimed for the budding of such nascent sensations. This concept word, created for a Christmas campaign jointly held by five cultural and commercial facilities—Roppongi Hills, Toranomon Hills, ARK Hills, Azabudai Hills, and Omotesando Hills—uses “singing to oneself” as a verb. Through repeated consultations with members of Misawa Design Institute, who handled the art direction, we decided to turn lalala—an almost universally understood onomatopoeia for humming—into a verb to connect people from diverse countries visiting the Hills through a shared sensation of joy that transcends language and meaning. Lalala is Love, and also Like, and also every verb through which the reader cares for another. Through soft words that embrace diverse emotions, we attempted to draw out individual sensations that couldn’t be contained in a single message.

── Inventing Language

The words we use casually every day are robust yet flexible—they’ve survived the test of time, being carved and polished along the way. The more we investigate their origins, the more we find their meaning, form, and sound have matured, and our respect and awe for our predecessors who crafted each word only deepen.

At the same time, just as there are differences between Heian-period and contemporary Japanese, words also change freely and fluidly with the times. Of course, it’s natural that these changes occur spontaneously, and someone’s arbitrary intervention doesn’t necessarily have positive effects (there’s also the risk of steering people’s consciousness in negative directions). On the other hand, isn’t it also true that linguistic invention can serve as a catalyst for advancing an era to the next dimension—much like the Meiji period’s movement to unify spoken and written language?

Nippon Design Center is a design company that champions our ability to “identify and visualize essence.” We observe society’s major currents and the modest lives of people within those flows, considering it an important role of design to visualize the essences hidden there—not only through visuals but also through words. Isome Word Institute, which developed this concept, will continue exploring kotobazawari as a perspective for unifying the texture of the world and the texture of words, continually seeking the possibilities of an embodied language that moves our living selves.