Hanko for the GM

We seem to have had a run on "Specials" recently, so here is another project to share with you.

In Japan hierarchy is important, when the Japanese meet it is usually quite formal. Business cards may be exchanged and should be shown respect, looked at closely and even admired. To a Westerner it is a little strange to need to know if your are of a "higher" or "lower" standing than the person you are conversing with. The language may also change, one person may adopt the "polite" form while the other adopts a more "common" form in word selection.

In the workplace your (Immediate) Boss would be Joushi 上司
Your (Immediate) Subordinate would be Buka 部下
Your (Immediate) Senior is Senpai 先輩
and your (Immediate) Junior kohai 後輩
The last two are regularly used in Martial Arts, anyway I digress .....

We have on file a large selection of martial art ranks, titles etc, but I also have Japanese business titles. So when a client was asking for a design for a hanko that he could use in his position of General Manager we had a source to reference.

General Manager is Buchou 部長. We also used the kanji for Great Britain - Eikoku - 英国. There other names that can be used for the UK etc, but Eikoku is the term the organisation has used in the past .

We have never mixed Kanji and English text in a Hanko before and not sure how the concept arose but we really like it. The Client was offered a more traditional stamp with kanji only, but we really like this mix of East and West, hope you do too.

If you are interested in purchasing a hanko, please contact us with some initial details of your requirements to sotosabisu@btinternet.com

Current costings can be found in the relevant shop page please click on the button below to view.

"Click" to go to - Hanko and Inkan section shop page

Top Tip
If you are accessing this site on your phone you may wish to view the "Web version" and access the menu in the side-bar to navigate. Just scroll down for the link.

This weeks hanko "Specials"

This week we have done a few "Specials" that I thought I would share with you.
Although 90% of our business is producing what I would call "semi-traditional" stamps now and again we are asked if we can look at making something a little different.

The first was for a personal hanko, this would normally be first name for a westerner, but our client requested to have both names we produced some graphics for him to look at.

and he selected the Square stamp with both his names in a square border.

The second stamp was a request to make a self stamping version of the client's traditional hanko, but the customer wanted a larger stamp to fill more of the space in the grading book.

We again produced a few graphics and the client requested to add his full name as well as the Katakana for Harris.

The Third stamp was a request for a club logo in a hanko, the graphics the club had was very poor quality so we had a bit of work to do to to convert to a vector image that we could use, but we got there in the end.

The last was a bit of a "blue sky" request from the "Karate Doctor" he had a graphic below

and requested if we could turn this into a hanko. Well there were a few challenges, a stamp can only be a single colour of course. We had to start from scratch and started with a line drawing of a doctor, we added a dogi with a rising sun and added the kanji for karate Isha - Karate doctor.

Commercially custom stamps don't make any sense, they would be very expensive if we charged for all the time it takes to create them. We are happy for them to be a "lost leader" and enjoy providing a service for fellow martial artists.

If you are interested in purchasing a hanko, please contact us with some initial details of your requirements to sotosabisu@btinternet.com

Current costings can be found in the relevant shop page please click on the button below to view.

"Click" to go to - Hanko and Inkan section shop page

Top Tip
If you are accessing this site on your phone you may wish to view the "Web version" and access the menu in the side-bar to navigate. Just scroll down for the link.