Kanji Tattoo Designs

Kanji Tattoos and Tattoo Designs

Thursday 15th of January 2009 08:46:15 PM [Add To This Article]

Kanji are the Chinese characters that are used in modern Japanese logographic (pictures that mean words) writing system. Chinese characters first came to Japan by way of articles imported from China as early as 57 AD. The Japanese language had no written form at the time the kanji was introduced. Originally, texts were written in the Chinese language and would have been read as such. Over time, however, a system known as ''kanbun'' emerged, which involved using Chinese text with pronunciation marks to allow Japanese speakers to restructure and read Chinese sentences, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar.

In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems and verb stems, while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings ''(okurigana),'' particles, native Japanese words, and words where the kanji is too difficult to read or remember. ''Katakana'' is used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords, certain naming, and for emphasis on certain words. Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words (or, in most cases, morphemes). From the point of view of the reader, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Deciding which reading is meant depends on context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and even location in the sentence. Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings.

Kanji tattoos are very popular in general, not just with those with Asian backgrounds. Part of the reason is that a kanji tattoo allows the wearer to have a word or phrase tattooed on their body and others may not know the meaning right away. This also means that anyone thinking about getting a kanji tattoo should research its meaning thoroughly to avoid getting a tattoo that does not mean what you think it means. Kanji tattoos often are found with other traditionally Asian tattoo elements, such as geishas, samurais and koi.