Wwii Japanese
Why were Japanese WWII Aircraft painted with Western Numerals and not Japanese Numerals?
When Japan was "modernised" in the 1800s and opened up to trade with other countries, it began a process of absorbing some elements of western culture. By the early 1900s, Japanese writing consisted of four different elements:
Kanji, or "Chinese" characters which had been the basis of Japanese writing for many hundreds of years.
Two forms of "Kana" for spelling out syllables - one of these kana systems helped to add grammatical endings to the Kanji characters, while the other was used to spell out foreign names and words which had no Japanese equivalent.
Finally, the English alphabet and numerical system was also employed, but on a very small scale. Restaurant menus, advertising signs and so on could demonstrate all four writing systems at the same time and literate Japanese would have to learn all four systems.
Squadron and divisional markings on IJA and IJN aircraft actually mixed both English numerals and Japanese Kanji or Kana characters - as did the markings on IJN ships and both Army and Naval armoured vehicles.
It is true that at the time of World War 2 there was a resurgence of anti-Western feeling in Japan and foreign words that had been adopted in the language were extremely frowned upon; but it seems that the western numeral system had been so fully assimilated that it could be considered as part of Japanese culture.
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