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A manji, a swastika-form hooked cross, on the map.
Also known as: Manji temple mark, Buddhist temple symbol, Temple mark on a Japanese map
Japanese maps mark Buddhist temples with a manji — a swastika with arms hooking anticlockwise, the Buddhist form used across Asia for millennia. The GSI proposed replacing it in 2016 for the benefit of foreign visitors and abandoned the change after domestic objection; the manji remains.
Denotes a Buddhist temple on a Japanese topographic map, drawn as a manji.
Contexts: Maps
Uses a symbol of unbroken Buddhist use in Japan long predating its twentieth-century European appropriation, and unconnected to it.
The manji is a Buddhist religious mark in continuous Japanese use for centuries. The catalogue holds a separate record for the Nazi appropriation of a similar form; the two are distinct symbols with distinct histories and are not treated here as versions of one thing.
Contexts: Maps
Was proposed for replacement by the GSI in 2016 with a three-tiered pagoda symbol, for foreign-visitor maps; the proposal was dropped for domestic maps after public objection and the manji was retained.
Contexts: Maps
A cross of four equal arms, each arm bending at a right angle at its end, the bends turning anticlockwise.
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.