Confession of a Tattoo Artist
From reader/tattoo artist "Devin":
"Here is a great question: Why there are so many fucked up kanji tattoos?
I have been a tattoo artist for 8 yrs. and will tell you why. A kanji is the cheapest thing that you can get at the tattoo parlor. For the most part they require no thought and are chosen on impulse right before getting tattooed. Most of the people who get these tattoos don’t care what it is, they just want to be "cool".
Anyone serious about doing nice Japanese style tattoos either A) don’t get kanji’s, or B) do some research first. Most of the pictures you have [posted on Hanzi Smatter] are from people who should have never gotten tattooed period.
The tattoo artists don’t care what the kanji means because they don’t care what you put on your body, especially when you are getting the cheapest tattoo in the shop. Most tattoo artists can’t read Japanese so how do they know what that stuff says, all they know is that you’re sure that this is what you want on your body for the rest of your life.
Just for fun, I am designing a tattoo right now and the guy gave me the kanji's he wanted:
The first one is earth,
the next three are Aquarius,
and the last is sheep.
Is that right?"
Devin is correct and his tattoo design is also correct.
土 = soil, earth; items made of earth
水瓶座 = Aquarius
羊 = sheep, goat
posted by tian at
11:51 PM
7 Comments:
One thing you might want to fix on the picture.. move the two dots on top of 3rd character over closer to the top of the 开 that you see on the left of that character so it looks closer to the real character 瓶.
I think the person is trying to tell people his element, star sign, and chinese year sign. All in one.
I agree with wulong. Also, the 'フ' on the left side of '水' could be a bit lower.
For someone who understands chinese, putting these hanzi together hasn't any connection nor meaning at all. Just like this, can you understand the connection between: table-banana-star?
>Most of the people who get these tattoos don’t care what it is, they just want to be "cool".
>Most of the pictures you have [posted on Hanzi Smatter] >are from people who should have never gotten tattooed >period.
My parents said to me that one day I will regret the tattoos I have. After half my life with the first one, I still haven't felt it. I never really understood what they were on about and how people could "regret" a decision that is so huge. It just struck me (finally) a hell of a lot of people are stupid. They just get one without putting a moment of thought in it, somehow neglecting to realize they have to live with it for the rest of their life. They probably deserve gibberish in their bodies. Marking one's body is a huge decision. Kinda like a marriage. You have to look at it a lot and that's what everyone knows you've partnered up with.
The problem with these five characters is that it lacks the linguistic balance and parallelism that the Chinese langauge loves. This design is a one-syllable word, followed by a three-syllable compound word, followed by a one-syllable word, without obvious division. Chinese doesn't place spaces between characters, so confusing character combinations can cause problems.
Literally it's "earth, water-bottle-constellation, sheep" (meaning "Earth, Aquarius, Sheep"), but it looks like a jumble of random words that could be interpreted as "muddy water, bottle seat, sheep" or "earth, water, bottle, seat, sheep". People might read the first two characters together as they are two of the five elements.
Personally, I'd design a scroll with the three characters meaning Aquarius down the center, and, in smaller characters, Earth and Sheep on the scrolled-over reverse side of the scroll, one at the top, and one at the bottom.
I agree with the previous anonymous poster, and would add that the "earth water" part could also mean groundwater, as in water you got from a well.
Definitely makes much more sense to separate it out somehow into different words instead of tattoing them together.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home