The or , introduced in 1972, is a green and yellow V-shaped symbol that new Japanese drivers must display on their cars for one year. A driver must display this mark on the front and back of the car for one year after they obtain a standard driver's licence. This obligation is only for a standard license, not for motorcycles, large vehicles, special cars and so on. Drivers who consider themselves beginners may continue to display the sign, even after the period of a year.

Its official name is . Conversely, the orange and yellow "Fukushi mark" or "Koreisha mark

Koreisha mark

The Kōreisha mark is a statutory sign that is set up in the Road Traffic Law of Japan to indicate "aged person at the wheel"...

" denotes elderly drivers. Both marks are designed to warn other drivers that the marked driver is not very skilled, either due to inexperience or old age.

Other uses

The Shoshinsha mark is commonly seen on topics/tutorials targeted at beginners (whether it involves driving or not), having the meaning "For beginners" or "Beginners are welcomed" .

The mark is also used as the logo for the imageboard

Imageboard

An imageboard or image board is a type of Internet forum that revolves around the posting of images. The first imageboards were created in Japan, and many English-language imageboards today are centered around Japanese culture...

 software Wakaba written in Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

 by Turku, Finland-based programmer Dag Ågren and by the imageboard index iichan whose indexed imageboards use Wakaba as their software package.
The software also features a markup language

Markup language

A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...

 called Wakabamark.

The mark is also increasingly being used by JDM enthusiasts in other countries, such as Australia, Malaysia, Malta, the U.K and U.S.A. to show their passion and interest in JDM culture. Some have taken the Shoshinsha shape and replaced the original green and yellow colors with their own flag to distance themselves from the "beginner" label, while still showing their enthusiasm for JDM car culture. There are even sites specializing in producing these "custom" wakaba badges. Thus, in countries besides Japan, the Shoshinsha mark has become more of a decorative decal rather than a traffic warning.

External links

• What are all these mysterious Japanese car stickers?