On the other hand I would support her if she campaigned to revive the word yamatomoji for kana
It took Timotarou to tell me about KUNISHIGE Tomomi, who has just released a book of her "eekanji"*, a strange but awesome blend of Roman and Chinese characters. I've seen this idea before, but never executed so well.
Her opinions on character set naming are dubious, though:
Though thoroughly modern -- her natural black hair is dyed a brilliant, shining yellow -- the artist is fiercely proud of her Japanese heritage: those same locks are worn up in a traditional style, she wears a colorful dress made out of one of her grandmother's old kimono and cringes when kanji is described in English as "Chinese characters."
"If I'm using them to write Japanese, what does that make them?" she says, throwing her arms into the air.
It makes 'em Chinese characters used to write Japanese, of course. I suppose you could be pedantic and call them something like "the Japanese branch of the Chinese-character tradition", but that's beside the point. It's most unsporting of her to get all huffy about the English term "Chinese characters" when it is more or less a direct translation of 漢字, kanji: "Chinese [specifically Han] characters". I mean, come on.
* Pronounced /e:kanzi/: it's a pun on 英漢字 ("English kanji") and ええ感じ ("Good feeling, lookin' good" in a western Japanese accent.
Anonymous:
If I'm using Latin characters to write American English, does that make me Latin American?