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Please could someone translate a tattoo! 2007/7/21 01:36
by Kimbo  

... 2007/7/22 16:29
It looks like a (harmony) but is not a good job...
by J Lady rate this post as useful

tattoos etc 2007/7/22 22:10
If it was supposed to be "wa", it is missing two strokes. It doesn't resemble any other kanji I know of.
by Sira rate this post as useful

Hanzismatter 2007/7/22 22:52
Kimbo,

Be sure to send your pic to the Hanzismatter site too, as they are always on the look out for mangled tattoos like yours...

http://www.hanzismatter.com/
by Dave in Saitama rate this post as useful

I found it 2007/7/27 15:54
This kanji means knock, strike, rap, tap, or button... you read it as "kou" and the kun readings are "tata" "ku" "hika" and "eru"

J,@that one, right? Doesn't seem to make sense for a tattoo... it's combination kanjis are J (koujo - subtraction or tax deduction) and J (kikoku - a name)
Who tattooed you? where did you go?
by Miko rate this post as useful

_ 2007/7/27 16:25
Yet another example of a fool getting a tattoo he doesn't understand.

You may as well have tattooed the word "chicken drumstick" on yourself in swahili.
by Unimpressed rate this post as useful

I'm sorry about your permanent tattoo 2007/7/27 20:55
Maybe you can get a better tattoo artist to modify the kanji to look like it actually means something special. perhaps this kanji would work...
h yz(Kikkyo) (n) (arch) diligence, assiduity, pinching, hard toil

All the artist would have to do is add a y@on top and then do the other kanji next to it.
I think the next time you get a tattoo with a foreign literary element in it, get some sources before you do it so other people who actually understand it won't be laughing at you.
by Miko rate this post as useful

Yes I know I've been stupid! 2007/7/27 21:10
Thanks for your help, I'm going to get it tattooed over when it's healed with a tribal patturn. The place I had it done at has been there years and has a good reputation so I honestly didn't think they would get it wrong, but hey I've learnt the hard way and will know not to be so trusting next time.

Thanks again for your suggestions xx
by Kimbo rate this post as useful

tattoos etc 2007/7/28 08:29
So it turned out to be so rare a kanji that most Japanese probably couldn't recognise it! My Japanese husband didn't know it either.

Never mind, it seems like it would be easy to tattoo over. If you (or a friend) want to get another kanji tattoo in the future, see if you can have a Japanese or Chinese person check and maybe re-write it as most tattoo artists in non-Asian countries are just copying the kanji as it it were a drawing and don't know how to write it correctly.

Also it sometimes seems that the designs have been passed through so many people not copying the character correctly that they can end up very wrong/ unrecogniseable after a while.
by Sira rate this post as useful

... 2007/7/28 10:55
One of my college friends from Japan didn't know it at all either. She told me to ask my old roommate from Hong Kong. heh, maybe a chinese person would know it better.
She didn't really recognize the first kanji of the recommendation I gave to Kimbo too. But, if anyone did get that certain tattoo, you could tell them what it is in hiragana...
by Miko rate this post as useful

J 2007/7/28 12:45
Well, it indeed is not a common letter at all in Japan, but it certainly exists in Kanjigen, the common dictionary of chinese characters officially noticed in Japan. The meaning indicated there is as Miko provided.

It also isn't a bad hand-writing either (let aside the fact that kanji tattoos seem corny to the Japanese). As mentioned, it probably makes more sense to the Chinese.

In any case, I really wonder why people keep asking about kanji tattoos on a forum about Japan. Kanji comes from China, and it is used in only a small part of Japanese writing.

Btw, Dave in Saitama, the site you provided is really painful, lol!
by Uco, Japanese whose major was Japanese rate this post as useful

re: Why here? 2007/7/28 15:37
In any case, I really wonder why people keep asking about kanji tattoos on a forum about Japan. Kanji comes from China, and it is used in only a small part of Japanese writing.

I think the reason is that at the moment lots of things associated with Japan are popular outside Japan, like manga, anime, Nintendo and the food, etc. Probably most people asking about tattoos are aware of the fact that kanji originated in China, but I'm not even too sure about that.
Another reason for people to come to this forum is that they usually get answers here, in many other forums these questions get ignored or they get suggested the most terrible kanji for tattoos. ^_^;; A google search brings up this forum pretty high up the list of results.
by Kappa rate this post as useful

kanji 2007/7/28 20:47
But Uco, wouldn't you say that Japanese people know just as well as Chinese people the meaning of kanji and the correct way to write them?

Also, from the point of view of someone who is still learning kanji (I can read about 1,200, but still lots of study to do), kanji is not a small part of Japanese writing, but rather a large part.

The reason I think it's a large part is that with only hiragana and katakana I would understand very little of the Japanese I see around me. To be able to read books, newspapers, magazine articles, signs and even place names a knowledge of only hiragana and katakana doesn't help all that much.
by Sira rate this post as useful

Babel 2007/7/29 13:49
Sira,

"wouldn't you say that Japanese people know just as well as Chinese people the meaning of kanji and the correct way to write them?"

I'm afraid I wouldn't say we know "just as well".

First of all, the main part about kanji when discussing tattoos is that the usage of Chinese characters (kanji) is very different between the Chinese and the Japanese. They are read totally differently, often written differently, and the meaning is quite different as well.

For example, (and I say this speaking from experience) I can go to a drug store in China and write A and and I could get some kind of medicine for my throat after communicating with gestures for 3 minutes. But if a restaurant reservation staff writes 8 kanji meaning to say, "We will expect you at six pm tonight." we are completely clueless of what it says.

Also, I sense that those who tattoo kanji on their bodies are aiming for what we call "kanji-jukugo" which is a phrase consisting of kanji only. However, what Japanese writing features is really hiragana. Professional writers today are encouraged to use less kanji so that the text will be easier on the readers' eyes. Plus, it's the combination of hiragana in main with bits of kanji scattered that makes pages of Japanese literature look visually beautiful.

Of course for those of us, including the Japanese, who suffer to learn loads of kanji at school, it seems like kanji shares a huge and important part of the Japanese language. And it does. However, what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't share as much of a big part as the tattoo-ees think.

Bottom line, there are way too many Chinese charaters that the Japanese can't read but the Chinese can, and again, the meaning or especially the order of writing is extremely different.

For those who have very little knowledge of kanji, perhaps you can imagine it as the difference between Latin and modern English, or even Latin and modern Spanish for that matter. They are similar in a way, but greatly different and changed over the years.
by Uco rate this post as useful

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