Japanese Kanji Tattoo Designs
333 Tattoo Designs with Chinese Characters, 343 pp.
© 2006 by Claus Liepke

eBook available at Lulu.com

Chinese characters are mainly used in the Chinese and Japanese language. There are simplified characters with less strokes (China, Singapore) than traditional ones (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan) with a more complex structure. All of them are pictograms or ideograms, meaning they are not phonetic letters as in our alphabet, but picture-like symbols. The reading or pronunciation of Chinese characters is different from country to country, yet the meaning remains (nearly) the same.

In the Japanese language the term Kanji stands for Chinese character, as the term Hanzi is describing the same in the Chinese language. Some Kanji may have slightly other meanings or usage than the referring Hanzi in Chinese - and a few Kanji of Japanese origin appear only in the Japanese language.

Often a combination of two Chinese characters is used to emphasize a special meaning. And - to make the confusion perfect - there are also two syllabaries in the Japanese language: Hiragana & Katakana for endings or grammar etc. A combination of Kanji with one or more Hiragana is quite common while Katakana are mainly used as a phonetic transcription for foreign words like names. You may either choose an expression written only with Kanji or as a combination of Kanji & Hiragana (where applicable). Don't use only Hiragana for a Japanese term as there are too many homophones (same pronunciations for different words) and it may look uneducated.

There are 12 categories in this collection of 333 Kanji Tattoo Designs:

• Animals
• Body
• Colors

• Emotions
• Family
• Luck

• Nature
• Numbers
• Philosophy

• Religion
• Time
• Virtues

Recommended reading: websites describing and displaying bad kanji tattoos with wrong translations or ugly styles (fonts):

• Hanzi Smatter
• Antipixelblog Kanji Tattoos

Removing of a tattoo can be very painful and expensive. Before inking your favorite tattoo design, make sure to choose the right symbol, size & location and consider a test:

• TattooJohnny: Tatto Test Drive
• TattooJohnny: Tattoo FAQ