Superdry
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Nathan Hopson spotted this gem in Bangkok while recruiting students this past weekend:
When I first looked at the sign, I had no idea what it was for. I thought perhaps it may have been for a deodorant or liquor. The Japanese didn't help, since — on my initial reading — it seemed to say "superdry" and then, in parentheses, something like "please" or "[just] do it", or so I thought. That only deepened my bewilderment.
When I started to look around, it emerged that Superdry is a UK clothing line that is popular in Europe.
Examining the Japanese more closely, we have kyokudo kansou 極度乾燥（"extremely dry"). After that comes the parenthetical addition of shinasai しなさい. This imperative is used in situations either of intimacy (close friends, family — though with friends it's more commonly used by women) or of strict vertical hierarchy (boss-subordinate, teacher-student, etc.). I suppose you could say that it's appropriate here in the final sense, in which it's the short, inoffensive imperative used for test instructions (kotaenasai 答えなさい ["please answer"]), and such like. I must confess, though, that I still don't catch the nyuansu ニュ アンス ("nuance") intended by the parenthetical expression.
A note from Miki Morita helps to clarify matters:
That company has been a mystery for me for a long time. I did some Internet research, and found no official or clear explanations for that (shinasai しなさい). One says that it adds Japanese-ness to kyokudo kansou, which otherwise could also be regarded as Chinese (jídù gānzào). Another says that it simply is the imperative form of "superdry" as a verb. Both make sense to me.
I personally like this shirt with the phrase ”TOKYOな," worn by Daniel Radcliffe, sold by the Superdry company. Obviously it is an adjectival verb, yet, used as a single word with Rōmaji, it evokes unexplainable mysterious feeling to me.
It seems like what we have is a UK clothing brand that features Japanese design. At one level, it's probably little more than the reversal of the long-established trend of Asian countries using English, French, German, Italian, etc. to make their products seem more glamorous. I'm tempted to call it an Asian fusion clothing line. You might think of the Japanese as a sort of kanji tattoo for the label. As Nathan put it, "This is highly suggestive of changing polarities in the global economy of 'cool' ('marketable'), but I doubt it's much more than that."
Even Adidas was using Japanese in Bangkok, though it was katakana, not kanji:
Guy said,
February 4, 2015 @ 1:56 pm
They've been in malls at least here in the San Francisco Bay Area for a while now.
Keith said,
February 4, 2015 @ 2:23 pm
I had no idea that Superdry was British…
I've known of the brand for a number of years (maybe five), and always assumed it was Japanese.
But then, I don't read Japanese, other than to recognise Yoshimura (ヨシムラ) that I always think looks like 347.
mollymooly said,
February 4, 2015 @ 3:09 pm
The brand self describes as "high-quality products that fuse vintage Americana and Japanese-inspired graphics with a British style"; so it's surprising the characters make any sense at all.
Paul B said,
February 4, 2015 @ 5:21 pm
I can't remember where I first heard it, but the explanation that makes most sense to me goes something like this:
Someone (call them Person A) was drinking a bottle of Asahi Super Dry beer, noticed the label with スーパードライ on it, and thought it would make a good T-shirt slogan or whatever.
Later on, they asked Japanese Person B, "how do you write 'super dry' in Japanese?'. Person B, not knowing the original context, and not understanding whether "dry" was descriptive or imperative, hedged their bets and wrote the equivalent of "(please make it) very dry".
To Person A, one bit of Japanese is as incomprehensible as another, and they took this piece of garbled translation and built a brand on it.
AG said,
February 4, 2015 @ 6:04 pm
I think the name is just a ripoff of Asahi Super Dry beer. Seems like an idiotic name for a British clothing store, but I see it everywhere, so guess it worked.
Matt said,
February 4, 2015 @ 6:12 pm
It's not uncommon for translators (professional and amateur) faced with requests to translate ambiguous fragments to include extra possibilities in parentheses. Maybe that's what happened here: "This is the translation of 'Superdry', but for example if that's an imperative verb, then also add…'" Maybe this is reading too much into it though!
"TOKYOな" is brilliant.
peterv said,
February 4, 2015 @ 6:27 pm
I recall seeing adverts in British cinemas at least 10 years ago entirely in Japanese. The adverts were for video games, and aimed at teenagers who no doubt thought Japan and Japanese language and products had cachet. I wondered then what other foreign language would be used by advertizers in Britain, or indeed elsewhere.
j2h said,
February 4, 2015 @ 10:23 pm
Apparently the head of the company admitted on Japanese TV to using machine translation to generate the Japanese text on their products, comparing it to "the English seen on t-shirts in Japan":
http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/10/16/superdry-popular-uk-fashion-brand-uses-gibberish-japanese/
Although the video is gone, the article does include a screenshot of some machine translation software given the input "super dry" and returning "極度乾燥しなさい".
I live in the UK, where the brand originated, and I vaguely recall seeing variations of their logo both with and without the parentheses around "しなさい" – so it's possible they were originally using 極度乾燥しなさい verbatim from the translation software, and the parentheses were added at a later date (maybe for purely aesthetic reasons?)
Jordan said,
February 5, 2015 @ 12:06 am
I always assumed it was from Japan, but I don't read or speak Japanese, so…yeah. Anyway, I once bought a Superdry product here in Malaysia: a baseball cap with the seemingly random but delightful words SUPERDRY CELTICS on it.
Alan Palmer said,
February 5, 2015 @ 4:47 am
I'm from the UK and often see people wearing Superdry clothing. Usually the logo is on a raincoat or windcheater so I've always assumed it referred to the rain-repellent properties of their coats. When I first started seeing their clothes I assumed it was a Japanese brand, but more recently I've seen the occasional mention in the financial pages/online so now know it's British.
Robot Therapist said,
February 5, 2015 @ 5:11 am
Reminds me of "Drizabone" clothing that I occasionally see in the UK
Ginger Yellow said,
February 5, 2015 @ 12:44 pm
I always assumed it was from the Asahi beer, as it's one of the two Japanese beer brands you're likely to see (Kirin Ichiban being the other) in Britain. It's also the sort of beer that marketing creatives stereotypically drink.
EndlessWaves said,
February 5, 2015 @ 3:23 pm
I'm Another Brit who assumed it was a foreign brand, although I'm not terribly keen on having corporate logos on my clothes so I don't tend to pay much attention to sports fashion brands like that. With a few exceptions I couldn't tell you where most of them were from.
The brand was so familiar that I assumed this post was going to be about the asterisk after new products added. Perhaps on the phenomenon of asterisks getting separated from the notes they're supposed to refer to as there doesn't appear to be anything on the bottom of the sign.
Nancy Friedman said,
February 5, 2015 @ 9:00 pm
I wrote about the origin of the Superdry name in a 2010 blog post:
http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2010/05/how-superdry-got-its-name.html
A couple of commenters noted the relationship to Japanese beer branding.
scav said,
February 6, 2015 @ 10:18 am
@EndlessWaves
I wondered about that. I think it's just a "liar's asterisk", and in fact no new products have actually been added.
Terry Collmann said,
February 11, 2015 @ 4:35 pm
Robot Therapist: Reminds me of "Drizabone" clothing that I occasionally see in the UK – Driza-Bone (sic) is Australian.
Paul McCann said,
February 13, 2015 @ 1:56 am
I live in Tokyo and visited Scotland in September and was very confused when I saw people carrying around bags from the company. When I visited a store it was immediately obvious most of the Japanese was nonsense or machine translations. At one point in a restaurant a server was wearing a shirt that said "スペルドリ" and I had to explain to him why I kept laughing.
There's a roundup of some of the more ridiculous examples here:
http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2133006375490408201