OT: Why "JAPAN" AND NOT "日本" on Japan's softball uniforms?

[EdSaid]

I noticed on the Japanese softball uniforms "Japan" was spelled out in English, and not In Japanese. Why? Only thing I can think of is for TV/marketing, possibly more viewers understand English.

Japan in Japanese is “Nippon” or “Nihon” while in English it is called “Japan”. In most languages around the world, it is called a name similar to “Japan” (for example, “Japon” in French or “Giappon” in Italian). “Japan” and “Nippon” do not sound similar. In Japanese, “Nippon” is written as 日本. 日 means “Sun” or “Day” and 本 in this case represents “origin”. Chinese people called it so because Japan is located in the East and literally is in the direction where the sun rises (in other words, where the sun originates). That is why Japan is sometimes called “the country of the rising sun”.

 

[Monte]

French and English are the 2 official languages of the Olympic games.

 

[Vowelguy]

The Olympics are a television show. And indeed the whole point of personal or team names on uniforms is for TV. The players presumably know what country they're from and what their name is. Most people in the stands (if there were such people) can't see the letters on the uniforms. It's all for TV.

 

[Happydad745]

When I was in Japan, 2005, I did lots of shopping in Nagoya...in the department stores, most of the T-shirts with words on the front or back were written in English. I found some at the Airport that had Katakana or Kanji, most of them, I found out later, were jokes. One said I am a fool, but I bought it because I did know this and showed it to a Japanese person at work...he laughed.

 

[Fairfield Fan]

I believe all the teams are using the Latin alphabet and English equivalents for their countries. So Russia (Olympic Committee) doesn't use the cyrillic, nor the Korean team "Hangul." Might be a requirement.