The Japanese Peace Sign

Over the weekend I went to my daughter’s annual school bazaar, which means that my life became a “school festival” episode again. At these festivals, each class or school club puts on different events for visitors, like a haunted house or a maid cafe or a food stand selling yakisoba noodles. One group of girls had done an especially good job setting up a hot dog stand with a parody of the Subway logo that I thought looked cool, so I got out my camera out to take a picture. Almost immediately, the girls struck that most Japanese of poses, flashing the “peace” sign at me as they prepared to have their picture taken. While I’d always assumed the “V” for victory gesture had entered the Japanese popular culture as a result of the occupation of Japan by the Allied soldiers, perhaps as some sort of cultural exchange negotiated between the Sanrio company and Winston Churchill, it seems to be a more recent phenomenon. According to one theory, U.S. figure skater Janet Lynn came to skate in the 1972 Sapporo Olympics and fell on her butt, and when she got up, she made a cute “peace” sign to the Japanese cameras. This was supposedly the moment when the gesture entered the Japanese DNA, and why you can’t take a picture of a Japanese person today without them making the “V” sign.

The “peace” sign is a very Japanese gesture to make.