Here’s an interesting thing that is, in fact, A Thing, in Japan: “Name Seals.” It seems that instead of scribbling their signatures on everything, the Japanese custom is to use a little stamp. I guess it’s half a dozen of one, six of the other… someone could copy your stamp (or steal it), but someone can forge your signature, too.
In general they are about half an inch in diameter. At one point in the video the presenter shows a display in a Japanese shop that has a whole bunch of stamps that have Western first names, transliterated into Japanese characters… not exactly precisely, given the one he looks at, but probably about as close as you’re going to get (and probably about as close as you’re going to get in writing down a Japanese name in English).
Me, I’m all in favor of “cultural appropriation.” If your people have something I think I might find useful… I’m’a gonna take it and modify it to suit my purposes. And the “Name Seal” thing is something that I think *could* potentially be interesting in the West. The problem, of course, is that in order for it to work, it would have to be pretty much universally accepted. I have no doubt that more than one Japanese businessman has come to Los Angeles for a business meeting and at the end they break out a contract and everyone gave him dead-eyed stares when, instead of signing it, he stamped it.
Still, there is a somewhat obscure precedent in Western culture: the Code Cylinder.
Now, imagine this: some years down the line, people might have their own Name Seal/Code Cylinders. The stamp would be at one end, but instead of being a simple piece of carved rubber, wood or metal, the stamp would be a moving mechanism, composed of, say, rotating or extruding bits. When not in use, the stamp does *not* form the necessary geometry. In order to get the stamp working right, the owner would need to set it. This could be done with:
1: A small metal key, in a fairly straightforward lock
2: A conventional number lock
3: Similar to the number lock, but whole sections of the cylinder twist
4: And for the high-end, a small biometric scanner like a fingerprint reader
I’d get a kick out of one of these things that was a combo of 3 & 4. You twist it to the proper orientations, apply your thumb, and *then* the stamp is mechanically produced.
To be really useful, the code cylinder would need to do more than just make a simple ink-stamp. Setting the stamp correctly also correctly sets an internal RFID chip; so when it comes time to sign that all-important contract, in full view of everyone you set your code cylinder, apply thumb, make your stamp, pass the cylinder over an RFID reader… and, because why not, you turn the cylinder around and scribble your signature because, like some of the name seals in the video, it has a pen built into the other end.
Getting such a thing into the culture at large would be a chore. But one area where I bet it might work: city, county, state government offices. The DMV. Courts. Hospitals and doctors offices, with a stamp for every prescription or referral. *That* might work.
And the beauty of it: when an SJW starts screaming at you about cultural appropriation and how you stole the name seal from the Japanese, you pummel them about the head and shoulders with your light saber and yell at them that your code cylinder was actually handed down through your family from the glory days of the old republic, before the dark times. And then you can mash some cheap gas station sushi into their hair.
