Posts tagged seals

Sealed Away

A while back, I mentioned a toy I made for drawing Japanese seals. So, what’s the deal with Japanese seals, anyway? Seals, called Inshō (印章), were used for means of authentication throughout Japanese history, in similar ways to how they were used elsewhere. They were generally made of stone, with a flat, generally square face where the seal is carved and a handle end that can be carved decoratively. Instead of being used with wax, Japanese seals, like seals in other East Asian countries, were used as stamps with ink to sign documents, from official proclamations and contracts to works of art.(en.wp:Seal (east Asia))
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Seals

Unexpected adventure leads me to post about something I mostly did over a year ago. Inshō is a Japanese seal generator: it takes a string of Japanese characters and draws a seal for you as an SVG. It’s not entirely the same as a year ago, though; it now shows you with color when it’s using Unicode character equivalences that make a given glyph iffier, and it no longer requires external font support. Have fun with it; when I’m a bit calmer I’ll find time to write a post actually explaining Japanese seals (in addition to that auspicious direction post I promised).