The JR mark is two letters inside a box, unchanged since 1987. It appears on trains that compete with each other. Japanese National Railways was privatized into seven separate companies, each of which kept the mark. The mark now signals a system that, legally speaking, doesn’t exist: no unified entity called JR owns these trains or sets their schedules. What the mark says and what it describes have been decoupled for nearly forty years. Passengers read it as meaning one thing. It means another. It works.
In New Orleans, Anthony DelRosario spent years after Hurricane Katrina photographing hand-painted signs on corner stores, beauty salons, barber shops. He called the project NOLA ‘Nacular. The signs are specific to their painters and their streets. KILLER FREE Jukebox. Cell Phone — Modern Ear Ache? They tell the truth about the place they’re in. They’re disappearing.
The JR mark survived because any of the seven companies can use it without asking the others. Nobody has to fight for it, change it, or give it up — so nobody does. The NOLA signs are disappearing because each one belongs entirely to its painter and its wall. Authenticity makes them irreplaceable, which is also what makes them unmaintainable by anyone else.
The fiction has a longer shelf life than the record.