We'd like to use analytics cookies to understand which symbols people look up, so we know what to research next. They are not used for advertising and we set none of them unless you say yes. What we store.
The same figure on a Japanese map and in twentieth-century Europe, and how to tell which one you are looking at.
If you are looking at a Japanese map, it is a manji and it marks a Buddhist temple. That is the whole answer for the great majority of people who ask this question, because the great majority encounter the figure exactly there. The manji is drawn upright with its arms hooking anticlockwise and has marked temples for centuries; the Nazi emblem is conventionally drawn tilted forty-five degrees with its arms hooking clockwise, and its meaning is entirely a product of the 1920s onward. Orientation is a guide rather than a rule — both directions occur in both traditions — so the reliable test is context: a map legend, a temple, a Buddhist or Jain object on one side; a flag, an armband, a political emblem on the other. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan proposed dropping the manji from maps intended for foreign visitors in 2016, precisely because this confusion is common, and abandoned the change after domestic objection.
The mark is a manji. Readers unfamiliar with it regularly take it for a Nazi swastika; it is an ordinary cartographic symbol that has marked Buddhist temples for centuries and carries none of that association in Japan.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Japanese map symbol for a Buddhist temple | Swastika |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | crosses | crosses and abstract |
| Symmetry | point | radial |
| Orientation | upright | orientation independent |
| Japanese map symbol for a Buddhist temple | Swastika | |
|---|---|---|
| Where you are seeing it | A Japanese topographic map, or a temple's own signage and seals. | Across Eurasia for at least seven thousand years in religious and decorative use; and, from the 1920s, as the emblem of the Nazi Party. |
| What it is telling you | There is a Buddhist temple at this point. Nothing more. | Depends entirely on the tradition and period. The record keeps the ancient religious meaning and the Nazi-era appropriation as separate, dated entries rather than merging them. |
| Usual drawing | Upright, arms hooking anticlockwise. | Both directions occur historically. The Nazi emblem is conventionally tilted to stand on a corner, which the manji is not. |
| Legal position | An official cartographic symbol of the Japanese state, printed on current maps. | Display is restricted by law in several countries when used in the Nazi sense; those laws generally carve out religious and scholarly use. |
| If you are unsure | Check whether the figure sits in a map legend or beside other map symbols. If it does, this is your answer. | Check what it is on and what is around it. A flag, a uniform or a political context points here; a map, a temple or a religious object does not. |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Swastika — The mark is a manji. Readers unfamiliar with it regularly take it for a Nazi swastika; it is an ordinary cartographic symbol that has marked Buddhist temples for centuries and carries none of that association in Japan. | Commonly confused with Japanese map symbol for a Buddhist temple — On a Japanese topographic map the same figure is a manji marking a Buddhist temple — a cartographic symbol with no connection to the twentieth-century emblem. |
The map symbol is an officially standardised fact and is recorded as one. The swastika record deliberately carries meanings of several different evidence classes, some of them disputed, because its history genuinely is contested — the two sides of this table are not equally settled and should not be read as though they were.
Map symbols used on Japanese topographic maps
Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) · retrieved 2026-08-23
Japan's national mapping agency's own published legend. Cited for the form and meaning of a symbol on Japanese topographic maps; the historical origin of individual symbols is cited separately where claimed.
History of the Swastika & Its Use as a Nazi Symbol
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia · retrieved 2026-07-26
A building's assembly point is a safe place to stand once you are outside. A ship's muster station is a staffed step in a procedure: you are counted against a roll, briefed, and if necessary allocated to a survival craft, which is why it has a letter or a number and appears on your cabin door card. Both are green, both show grouped figures, and both are called an assembly point in ordinary speech — and treating a muster station as somewhere merely to wait is the misunderstanding drills exist to correct.
Follow the teeth. They always point downhill. Teeth running outward and away from the crest line mean the ground was built up — an embankment carrying a road or railway above the surrounding land. Teeth running inward, towards the line, mean the ground was cut away — a cutting taking the route below it. The two marks are deliberate mirror images of each other, which makes them easy to tell apart once you know the rule and almost impossible to guess if you do not, because both read as a line with hatching. This is one of the few map conventions where knowing a single rule settles the question permanently.
Land cover on a Japanese map is drawn as one small motif repeated across an area rather than as a single symbol, and the categories come in pairs that differ by exactly one feature. Paddy against dry field is two small strokes drawn two ways. Broadleaf against needleleaf is a rounded canopy against a pointed one on the same trunk. Timber bamboo against dwarf sasa is woodland against ground cover. In every case the pair covers the whole of a category between them, so identifying one is really a matter of deciding which half of a pair you are looking at — which is why these six are worth reading together rather than one at a time.
A circle drawn around a Japanese map symbol raises its rank. The same 文 character is a primary or lower secondary school on its own and a high school inside a circle; the same crossed truncheons are a neighbourhood police box on their own and a full police station inside a circle. Once you know that, three separate identification problems collapse into one rule, and the reason the marks look so alike stops being a defect of the map and becomes the point of it. The circles around the public-administration marks work slightly differently and are the exception worth knowing: there the distinction is not plain-versus-circled but what sits inside the circle, and those three are genuinely easy to confuse at map scale.