Crazy Kanji

In a Yokohama hospital a Navyman with the mumps stared blearily at a Japanese magazine and started seeing things. To Lieut. Commander Bryant W. Line, who does not read Japanese, the stylized dabs and curlicues of the brushwork characters, known as Kanji, conjured up all manner of fanciful situations: poker players in a pup tent, an irate baseball umpire, a boy peering wistfully into a saloon.

Out of the hospital, Line copied out some Kanji characters and sent them with his interpretations to Pacific Stars & Stripes, the armed forces' daily newspaper in the Far East. Stars & Stripes ran Line's contribution under the heading "Nipponoodles." So many Americans began sending in their own Kanji entries that the paper started a Nipponoodle contest and appointed a full-time Nipponoodle editor, who found that it was "like taking a perpetual Rorschach test." With more than 12,000 commonly used characters to draw from, crazy Kanji fever swept the U.S. colony in Japan and erupted into a Stars & Stripes anthology of the 100 best Nippo-noodles. To let the folks back home in on the fun, a U.S. publisher (Greenberg; New York) will put out a civilian version of the Nipponoodle book next month. For some typical Nipponoodles, see below.

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