ABSTRACT
Mothers of Letters and Typologic were but small endeavors, yet since then, metal movable type has unexpectedly received renewed attention, largely in conjunction with various moves to revive letterpress printing, led by younger generations. The immediate source for the movable type used in Japan comes from the sets of type imported from Europe via Shanghai in the nineteenth century, but several earlier attempts were made to use movable type. The challenge of printing Japanese with movable type lies in the presence of kana, the two phonetic syllabaries known as hiragana and katakana. The French who endeavored to produce the first movable types of Chinese characters, from the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, probably tried to create a design that looked more or less well balanced in relation to the Roman letter fonts they had been using.
