> Because Japanese text is read from right to left, the earliest viewers of The Great Wave would have likely read the print that way too, first encountering the boaters and then meeting the great claw of water about to swallow them. So instead of riding along with the gargantuan wave as you might in a left-to-right reading, they would face right into the massive wall of ocean.
I feel really dumb, but I have never even noticed the boats. In the reversed I see them very clearly, but in the original the wave is completely dominating the view (now I see the boats of course, but my focus is completely on the wave by default).
Worth noting the color of the boats varies from white to yellow to dark brown in the various prints, so sometimes they appear far more obviously than others.
This happened to me too! I'm not sure if it's the left-to-right thing though, that sounds a bit unlikely to me. Specifically that it's tied to the language we use. (For the record I probably default to reading left-to-right, though I also read and write in Hebrew which is RTL.)
Historical Japanese text, written vertically, is read top to bottom and right to left (like in those prints). On the other hand, more modern text (including what’s more common now) is read left to right when written horizontally. There are some more variations on directionality.
Nevertheless, the picture does look and convey a different impression when flipped.
> Baseline font metrics will never deliver great CJK typography because there are too many limitations.
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> This is why InDesign J implements virtual body metrics based on Adobe proprietary table information for true high-end Japanese layout. There is no virtual body standard digital font metric standard so everybody implements the missing stuff on the fly and everybody does it different. Unfortunately the irony of it all is that Adobe played a huge role in how these limitations played out in the evolution of digital fonts, desktop publishing (DTP) and the situation we have today.
I have a Kobo reader which supports both ePub 2 and ePub 3, and IIRC you need ePub 3 in order to get proper RTL/top-to-bottom text and Japanese typesetting, as well as proper comics support (if you buy an ePub 3 manga, it'll properly flip the page turn direction and the progress bar; a CBZ or other format won't). But most other readers I run into don't understand ePub 3 properly.
I'm probably lower-intermediate at Japanese, so take this with a grain of salt.
I find that reading vertical text feels better, even though I first learned to read horizontal text. I don't know if this is all in my mind, or it really does have some appeal to it, though.
Ah, yeah, my main motivation is reading light novels, and I've actually read a few really easy ones. I've also read manga, but it's hard to find any that I like that are also at my level.
I'm not sure how I'd feel if the vast majority of my usage had been horizontal instead.
I own a bunch of novels in Japanese, and every single one is vertically-written. Same with all the comic books I own. I think maybe a couple children's manga I had years ago were horizontally-written, but we're talking something I haven't laid eyes on in decades, so I might be mis-remembering.
If you want to try a horizontal text layout novel for some reason, "私小説―from left to right" is one. It's a deliberate choice because it's a semi autobiographical novel about the author's life as a bilingual Japanese and English speaker growing up in the US. The text is peppered with English words and fragments of dialogue to try to convey some of the bilingual experience.
If it's not done a lot on the web, I blame CSS. With horizontal text you scroll the page from top to bottom, with vertical text from right to left. Most HTML/CSS seems to be optimized for the former. E.g. vertical percentage margins don't work like horizontal ones, and CSS3 columns have similar issues.
It’s rare in modern times, but sometimes you may encounter a sign board written horizontally right-to-left, as in this sign above the front entrance to the Nippon Budōkan:
That sign in particular says "Martial Arts Hall" ("budokan" / 武道館) from right to left.
Imagine an alternate universe where English could also be read left-to-right or right-to-left. If you were to see a sign saying "Hall Arts Martial", you'd immediately know the right way to read it.
I wonder the logic and even history of why right to left came into being. Is there any benefit in choosing a directionality of one vs another.
One thing that comes to my mind- book binding is done on the left edge of the book/news paper. So if folds are created you would go read left paper first and then to the right. Now if you are parsing left to right at higher level- At lower level wouldn’t it become consistency of UX to offer left to right reading?
It’s kinda of arbitrary. For ink:graphite writing top to bottom and right to left has the advantage of not smudging for right handers. For more durable media (carving/etching/chiseling) I think it is more arbitrary.
Boustrophedon (alternating left-to-right and right-to-left) was used sometimes in ancient Greek, so that your eyes didn't have to jump to the beginning of the next line.
Even manga translated into English is right-to-left with the first page (in English) scolding you for opening the book at the back, and telling you how to follow the text.
Also fans of some manga (especially One Piece?) will talk about how the comics will make use of this sense of right to left, with subtle timing, action, or causality often being from right to left (if Star Wars was a manga, Han would shoot from the right of the frame).
The description of the Japanese woodblock printing process in https://education.asianart.org/resources/the-ukiyo-e-woodblo... says that the artist's initial drawing is pasted face down on the woodblock, which is then carved to match it. So (unless I've got myself confused) the final print will be the same way round as the artist's drawing. This also means that text in the image (like the title and the artist's signature) come out the right way round.
> Because Japanese text is read from right to left, the earliest viewers of The Great Wave would have likely read the print that way too, first encountering the boaters and then meeting the great claw of water about to swallow them. So instead of riding along with the gargantuan wave as you might in a left-to-right reading, they would face right into the massive wall of ocean.
Reversed image from the article to demonstrate: https://artic-web.imgix.net/5c05c38c-1c80-446f-a3db-4b95b42e...