What do Peanuts and Snoopy have to do with Japanese calligraphy? Quite a lot it seems. Best Friends Snoopy and Charlie Brown and the spirit of Charles Schulz and artist Yoshiteru Otani can all be found in one delightful exhibition. SNOOPY JAPANESQUE traveled from Ginza to the Hankyu Umeda head offices in Osaka and can be viewed from September 4th to the 16th, 2013.

Yoshiteru Otani’s museum and commercial exhibition designs on a variety of projects throughout Japan are well known. The special moment of inspiration for what followed came in 1993 when he met Charles Schulz. Otani has focused much of his creativity on projects relating directly to Peanuts characters since that time.

Otani uses calligraphy characters and wraps them into the Peanuts gang as in the image below. Charlie Brown and Peanuts sit snuggled within the Kanji for friend。