McDonald’s Japan is known for its online ad campaigns that draw international attention. Its latest stunt, however, drew a few heads, as it employed a writing system that some people have tried to pretend is an ancient Japanese form of writing.
McDonald’s is far and away Japan’s most popular burger chain. With 2,967 stores nationwide, it surpasses local favorite Mos Burger (1,308 stores). Like Starbucks, the company’s managed to succeed by adjusting its offerings to the Japanese market. Burgers like the Samurai Mac, a bruegr with a soy and sesame sauce, and seasonal favorites like the Tsukimi Burger combine local tastes with the universal appeal of standards such as the company’s addictive french fries.
Past and current McDonald’s Japan social media campaigns have generated tons of interest – and controversy. Its current campaign with popular anime Neon Genesis Evangelion is drawing heavy interest on social media. Meanwhile, its August promotion, which leveraged AI-generated ads, drew criticism for its Uncanny Valley depths of unoriginality.
The company’s latest tweet, however, seems out of left field. It depicts a stone etching of a cheeseburger with text below it that looks akin to Egyptian hieroglyphics.
What the hell is that, anyway? Turns out it’s not a creation of the company’s own making. Instead, it’s a type of script called Jindai moji (神大文字) with a controversial history of its own.
Jindai means “Age of the Gods” in Japanese. It indicates a range of writing systems that people in Japan’s Edo Era (1603-1868) attempted to claim were Japan’s “original writing system” before the introduction of Chinese characters.
The argument was that the Nihon Shiki, the second-oldest book of classical history in Japan, recorded the practice of divination using bones. That could only happen, some argued, if Japan had a writing system prior to using kanji and developing the kana syllabaries.
Scholars have since mostly dismissed these arguments, saying they’re creations of people in the Edo Era. Other Japanese historical texts from the 9th century make clear that the country had no writing system until kanji arrived. In addition, the character sets are all based on modern Japanese’s five vowels – not the eight vowels we know were used until the Heian Era.
The existence of Jindai Moji would also contradict everything we know about the development of the Japanese written language. If it had actually existed, for example, there would have been no reason to write in Kanshiki-Wabun, or Chinese used to write Japanese. There would have also been no reason to develop manyogana, which mapped Chinese characters to Japanese sounds.
In short, if one or more of these scripts existed, there would have been no need to adopt the much more complicated Chinese writing system or to develop hiragana and katakana, the language’s two syllabaries.
The script used by McDonald’s Japan is specifically known as Woshite characters (ヲシテ文字). Other character sets, such as Hokkaido characters, also tried to claim to be Japan’s pre-Chinese writing system.
By crafting the post like a stone tablet carving, McDonald’s Japan made a sly shout-out to the strange history of Jindai Moji. In the end, however, its message wasn’t anything controversial or profound. When translated into Japanese writing, the picture says 正月もサムライマック食べてね – “Keep eating Samurai Mac in the New Year.”
In other words, it was just, as Ralphie proclaimed after finally decoding the message from The Little Orphan Annie Radio Show, “a crummy commercial.” (Son of a bitch.)
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