7-Day Book Cover Challenge (Day 6): “Book from the Ground”

7???（?6）：?←?

The sixth book is Book from the Ground by the Chinese artist Xu Bing. This is a novel that’s written entirely in pictograms! I love pictograms so much that I wrote my “master’s project” (the equivalent of a master’s thesis at my journalism grad school; essentially a long article meant for publications in magazines) on it.

I feel very lucky to have learned about Xu Bing from my dear friend Kieu, an artist who also loves languages. I was fascinated by Bing’s renditions of English words that are made to look like Chinese characters. Then, a few years after, Bing happened to come to my grad school to speak–and that’s how I learned about this book, which he was still writing at the time. 

The back of the book contains Bing’s quote that says: “Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read.” Indeed, the pictograms make the story accessible–but I also find that it takes a lot longer to read! The story is essentially about a day in the life of one man, and has lots of humor (including slapstick bathroom humor).  

I’d always been fascinated by kanji, and love how they are essentially little pictures. They are so concise in conveying meaning. I especially love the series of characters that belong to one family, like fish names (who *hasn’t* tried to read all the characters on tea cups at sushi restaurants??), tree names (like fish, you can kind of guess what “hard tree,” “white tree,” etc. each refer to!), and types of weather (especially poetic with the droplets in the “rain” portion). 

When I attended Bing’s lecture, emojis were just becoming popular. Facebook wasn’t as big, Twitter was just gaining traction, and Instagram didn’t even exist. But texting was huge, and lots of shortened words (like LOL and TTYL) were being used. I began to wonder if that was the direction were going–will words continue to be shortened, eventually giving way to pictures? I talked about this with my advisor and fellow advisees, and one of the advisees pointed out that letters like hieroglyphs came from pictures–so perhaps we were actually coming full circle.

I really, really, really enjoyed working on this master’s project. I got to interview lots of designers, including the designer of the sports icons of the Mexico City Olympics (1968), and a designer who was commissioned by the Department of Transportation to create airport pictograms (the first of its kind, including bathroom signs). I also got to interview other professionals, including a computer programmer who crowdsourced the translation of Moby Dick into emoji, as well as the founder of an NPO that facilitates virtual communication among children all over the world using emoji. (I didn’t get to meet Bing himself, but visited his studio in Brooklyn, where his assistant provided me with many resources.) Some showed me drafts of their designs, and many welcomed me into their home, reminiscing about their past projects or sharing their ideas for the future. Others were kind enough to meet me for tea–on one occasion at a station in Tokyo, when they were about to jump on a bullet train to go home for the holidays.    

It is truly one of my biggest regrets in life that, while I submitted this article to my school, I did not get to publish it in a magazine. While I was pitching it, I was very excited that one major magazine that I’ve always loved expressed interest–but they asked that it be cut to 300 words (less than 1/20 of its length). I felt that was too short, and while I was being indecisive, I missed my timing. Now I fear it is too late, since the interviews were done ten years ago. I think back to all the kind interviewees who were generous with their time–especially the then-79-year-old designer who not only picked me up at a train station and drove me to his house, but gave me a two-hour long interview over tea, kindly brought out his hand drawn designs, and even gave me a rare copy of a poster that has his pictograms. I would still very much like to revisit this project, especially to repay his and other interviewees’ kindness.

Anyway, I continue to be fascinated by kanji, emoji, and pictograms, and look forward to exploring this topic more!

*****

6冊目は中国人アーティストの徐冰（Xu Bing）による 『Book from the Ground（地の本）』。すべてピクトサインで書かれた（描かれた？）素敵な本です。

私は子供の頃から漢字が大好きです。割れた卵にそっくりな「卵」や木がたくさんある「森」は小さな絵ですし、「雪のように白い魚＝鱈」、「堅い木＝樫」のように、ちっちゃいスペースにたくさんの意味を詰め込んでいる字も素晴らしい。友人を通じて徐冰のことを知ったのですが、彼は、アルファベットを漢字のように書いたりして、もとからよく字で遊ぶアーティストのようです。

私が大学院にいた時に徐冰が講演しに来たのですが、その際に知ったのが、当時まだ執筆中だったこの本。そこで私もすっかりピクトサインに魅了され、それを修士論文（といっても、ジャーナリズムの大学院なので、雑誌に載せることを意図した長文記事です）のトピックにしました。ちょうど絵文字の人気が出始めたころだったので、どんどんコミュニケーションが短く速くなっていく中、言葉はどんどん絵に取って代わられるのかを調べたいと思いました。

修論を書く過程はものすごく楽しいものでした。メキシコシティ五輪のスポーツのアイコンをデザインした方をはじめ、多くのデザイナーと話す機会があり、他にも、クラウドソーシングで『白鯨』を絵文字に翻訳したプログラマーの方、絵文字を使って国が異なる子供たちにコミュニケーションを促すNPOの代表の方もインタビューする機会がありました。

今悔やまれてならないのは、修論を学校に提出した後、雑誌に投稿することができなかったということです。300ワード（全体の20分の１以下）に縮めたら検討してもよいと言う雑誌もあったのですが、あまりに短いので悩んでいるうちにタイミングを逃してしまいました。インタビューした方々は本当に優しく、今でも思い出して一番胸が痛くなるのは、運転して私を駅まで迎えに来てくださり、ご自宅で２時間以上インタビューに応え、自分がデザインしたピクトサインの珍しいポスターまで下さった、当時79歳だったデザイナーのおじいさまのことです。論文が書かれてちょうど10年経ってしまいましたが、彼のため、そしてインタビューに応えてくださった多くの方のためにも、いつか何らかの形で世に出せることを心から願っています。