The above picture shows part of an article from the Taipei Times. The full article is available online here.

The relevant part:

Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries representative Ho Kuang-wan (賀光卍) expressed skepticism over its effectiveness as a deterrent.

Anyone who knows me know’s I’m a fan of obscure characters. I get downright giddy when I see a variation on a character that I’ve never seen before. Equally cool is a character used in a name that isn’t usually. In fact, this may be the first time I’ve seen 卍 in the wild. I brought it up to Steve, and he can’t recall seeing it like this either.

Early on, I’d always thought 万, the simplified form of 萬, looked suspiciously like 卐 (also written 卍), which shares the same pronunciation. They are in fact variants. A quick look at ChineseEtymology.org brings up a seal script form matching 卍 (L22753).

From the Wikipedia article:

The paired swastika symbols are included, at least since the Liao Dynasty (AD907–1125) , as part of the Chinese writing system (卍 and 卐) and are variant characters for 萬 or 万 (wàn in Mandarin, man in Korean, Cantonese and Japanese, vạn in Vietnamese) meaning “all” or “eternity” (lit. myriad). The swastika marks the beginning of many Buddhist scriptures. In East Asian countries, the left-facing character is often used as symbol for Buddhism and marks the site of a Buddhist temple on maps.

That’s about it. Characters are fun.

Thanks to Anne for sending me this photo.