ElectricSun

It was this embroidery that started the whole ElectricSun thing.

It originates from a Boxfresh sweatshirt from around 1989/1990 with this design on the chest. Around this time, Boxfresh did a lot of screen prints and embroidery on Russell Athletic t-shirts and sweatshirts (with the RA branding still present), a far cry from the Boxfresh we know today.

I was on work experience, illustrating, in Switzerland in 1991. One lunch break, I was chatting to one of the workers and it transpired that he could speak eight languages, six of them fluently. He translated the Japanese embroidery on the sweatshirt I was wearing to be ‘beware electric sun’. I didn’t really expect it to mean anything at all. I believed this to be true, and so ElectricSun came to be. Eventually.

I have since translated these words into Japanese symbols in Google Translate, with a different result. The first symbol does seem to mean ‘electric’, but the other symbols offered by Google are different, so I’m left wondering what it actually means. If anybody could shed any light on this, I’d really appreciate it.
I’d just like to know what ‘Electric Sun’ is in Japanese symbols.

Maybe it doesn’t translate after all, but it still means something to me.