Five Must-Knows When Getting a Kanji Tattoo

Japanese tattoos are cool. But if a personal translator is out of your
league how can you avoid becoming a kanji fashion victim and get stuck
with a tattoo you will really regret?

1. Know the difference – hiragana, katakana and kanji

Before you talk to your tattoo artist, make sure you know what you are
talking about. You say you want a Japanese tattoo, but what do you
know about Japanese characters? You need a quick stint in 2-minute
Japanese boot camp.

First off, let's be clear that there is no Japanese "alphabet". There
are three sets of Japanese characters – hiragana, katakana and kanji –
and each group has its own history, function and style. Get your head
around these facts and you will already know more than 99% of the
people walking around with Japanese tattoos right now:

Hiragana – These simple, rounded characters represent sounds, but have
no independent meaning. They were developed by women in the Heian
period and are still considered feminine by Japanese people.

Katakana – Developed by Buddhist monks around the same time as
hiragana, these are simple, angular characters that also represent
sounds and have no meaning of their own. You saw them cascading down
the screen in Matrix (although they were backwards!)

Kanji – Originally from China, these characters are like pictures,
representing a meaning and also several different sounds depending on
the situation.

Just reading this has probably given you an idea of which style you
might like for your tattoo – but don't stop just yet! Now you know
what kinds of Japanese characters there are, let's move on to…

2. Writing styles

Come a bit closer. Lean forward towards the screen. That's right. Now,
look at the words in front of you. Take a good, close look at the
shapes of these letters. OK? Now tell me honestly: Would you want a
tattoo in Times New Roman? How about Tahoma? What's that? You don't
want a tattoo by Canon or Epson? Sure you don't. And in the same way,
you don't want to have your Japanese tattoo looking like a printout
either!

So, now we move on to writing styles. Just like there are three kinds
of Japanese characters, there are also three ways they can be written.
Don't worry. This is easy! I know, you are thinking that you can't
even read Japanese, so how on earth will you be able to recognize
these different styles? Well, try this:

Kaisho – Block letters. You learned to write your ABCs like this, and
Japanese kids learn to write their characters in just the same way:
Like a Volvo – boxy but good.

Gyousho – Cursive letters. You moved up to middle school and learned
you could write faster by letting the parts of some letters flow into
the next. Yes, you guessed it - the Japanese do the same thing, and
they call it gyousho.

Sousho – Super-cursive letters. Ever seen a prescription from a
doctor? Then you know what sousho is like in Japanese: Sure, the
writer or some other trained person can (probably) read it, but no one
else has a clue what it says!

Are you getting the picture? If you want to look like a computer
printout, then be my guest and go for the kaisho style. That's your
choice. But I think you probably want to use either gyousho or sousho
for your tattoo. My personal preference would be gyousho: It's
stylish, but it won't leave even native speakers baffled.

3. Real or fake?

Remember I mentioned Mel C at the beginning? Well guess what kanji she
got tattooed on her arm? That's right – "Girl Power": Great in
English, but show this kanji combination to most Japanese people and
you'll get a blank look at best. Want a worse example? Try "big
daddy". Now, you know what it means in English, but put it into kanji
and you end up with "large father"! It just doesn't work.

I'm sure you remember that kanji are the only characters that have
meaning as well as sound. And their beauty means that they are what
most people want for their tattoos. But watch out: As well as being
popular, they can also be the most dangerous!

Let's see if we can find a pattern here: Look carefully at the
examples above. What are they communicating - concrete concepts or
abstract ideas? Can you see the difficulty the translators had? The
kanji for "dragon", "samurai", "love" or any other concrete ideas are
pretty easy to discover. But go for anything with an idiomatic meaning
and whoever is trying to help you translate it is going to get a major
headache!

Just an idea, but how about this suggestion: Rather than trying to
force a round English peg into a square Japanese hole, why not find a
real Japanese phrase that you like and get that instead? Bushidou (the
Way of the Warrior) and Ninjutsu (The Art of Stealth) are two good
examples of real Japanese terms that would make great tattoos.

4. Your name in Japanese

As I'm sure you remember from 2-minute Japanese boot camp, katakana
are the characters usually used to write foreign words and names. So,
if you want to get a tattoo of your name, technically these would be
the characters you would choose. But I am guessing that, like most
people, you want your name written in kanji.

Do a quick search on Google and you can find a number of sites that
specialize in translating names into kanji. Basically there are two
different methods that these sites use, so let's look at them here.

Translating the meaning

This method involves finding out the original meaning of the English
name, and then researching the kanji equivalent.

For example, my name has its origins in Greek and means "crowned one".
The one who is crowned is the king, so I could translate my name into
the kanji for king and call myself ohsama. (Perhaps a little
pretentious – and disturbingly similar to Mr. Bin Laden's first name!)

Translating the sound

This is a lot more difficult! Flick through a dictionary and you will
find a bunch of kanji that can be combined to sound like your name.
But sound isn't everything: Remember that kanji have meaning as well.
In fact, it is even more complex than this! Be sure to check each of
the following factors with anyone who translates your name like using
this method:

1. Sound – Does it sound like your name or not? I have seen my name
"translated" on certain websites to sound like Stefan. Shame my name
(Stephen) is actually said the same as Steven!

2. On-yomi and kun-yomi – Yes, more technical words! But don't panic –
they are easy to understand: Basically, kanji have two kinds of
reading. One kind, on-yomi, is their original Chinese sound. The
other, kun-yomi, is their Japanese-only sound. What to watch is that
(like oil and water) on-yomi and kun-yomi don't mix. Use either all
on-yomi reading or all kun-yomi readings to make the sound of your
name.

3. Meaning – Do the kanji have a good meaning together? Now, it can be
very difficult to find kanji that sound right and have a good meaning,
so you may need to compromise a little on one of these.

4. Masculine or feminine – I guess this is more like a sub-category of
meaning, but it is something you need to check out to avoid
embarrassment. For example, while "Asian Beauty" may be a great
combination for a woman, I get the feeling most men would not be too
happy about having that permanently written into their skin!

5. If in doubt, check!

First, use your new-found knowledge of Japanese to ask a few difficult
questions to your tattoo artist or kanji "specialist". If you get the
feeling they don't know what they are talking about, you probably want
to look elsewhere.

Next, before you get anything permanent done, use an online dictionary
to check whether the Japanese really means what you want it to. You
may not be able to input Japanese yourself, but you can copy and paste
characters from an email or web page and see what they mean.

Finally, if you are lucky enough to know any, ask a Japanese person
what they think. Their confused expression may tell you that you have
come up with another "big daddy"!

Follow this advice and you will avoid the most dangerous pitfalls of
Japanese tattoos and get a kanji tattoo you can be proud of.

About the Author

Stephen Munday lives in Japan and is currently starting his own online
business testing Adsense Decoded techniques on his new site
SleepDeeper.org

This article is (c) Stephen Munday 2005. Permission is given to
reproduce this article in whole with the URLs correctly hyperlinked.

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