This paper explores the ‘graphic artifacts’ (Hull, 2012) of jibunshi (‘personal history’), Japanese life writing, as semiotic time capsuling. By semiotic time capsuling, I mean a material process of effacement and resurfacing that mediates ‘non-adjacent timescales’ (Lemke, 2000). I focus on one grassroots literacy movement (original formulator of the genre name, jibunshi) and its ideology of addressivity, a fantasy of tele-communication that conjures up other times, other lives, and other values. The movement's practical philosophy of the life-historical ‘record’ as a time capsule-like sign addressed to distanced addressees offers its participants an unlikely tool for politicizing everyday life against hegemonic nationalist nostalgia. •Life historical texts as graphic artifacts are analogized to modern time capsules.•The idea of semiotic time capsuling is proposed as a form of historical semiosis.•Semiotic time capsuling affords ideologization of addressivity.•A Japanese ‘personal history’ project is discussed as an ethnographic case.•The case reveals a conceptual contrast between two kinds of addressivity.