‘Tiny canvases, big tales’: deciphering the concept of tax through Japanese children’s postcard drawings

Children’s drawings serve as a medium for conceptualizing complex societal ideas. This study investigates how Japanese children aged 11–12 years employ multimodal metaphors in tax-themed postcard drawings to represent taxation. By analyzing 712 contest submissions, this research identifies frequent metaphorical categories, examines their distribution across verbal, pictorial, and multimodal modes, and categorizes them into relational and attributional metaphors. Results indicate a substantial reliance on metaphorical reasoning, particularly metaphors that frame taxation positively – as SUPPORT, BETTERMENT, or PROTECTION. Further analysis reveals children’s advanced ability to deliberately use pictorial and verbal resources, aligning multimodal strategies to communicate complex societal concepts. Importantly, relational metaphors, which involve structured conceptual mappings, emerged as significantly more frequent than attributional metaphors, suggesting deep cognitive engagement and advanced reasoning skills. These findings contribute to research on multimodal communication and children’s socio-semiotic meaning-making strategies.