Looking to see if anyone can help me out. Looking for a Katana design to go down my leg, from just below knee to just above ankle. Should have somewhere, maybe on the blade, to place 4 Chinese characters Insect is getting for me to ensure accuracy. Either on the blade etched in, or in a banner wrapped around it, or maybe on leather straps hanging off the hilt, not sure.

Anyone want to take some cracks at it, let me know, I plan on getting it done during the beach house trip if I can afford it. Never had one before, and I'm fucking terrified of needles, so it'll be interesting.

 

Katanas are Japanese, so Chinese characters make no sense, and either way, that's pretty cliche for a tattoo.

 

A Katana. DLP's favorite sword, right? lol

I'll see if I can find something.

 

Implying Kanji aren't Chinese characters that Japan borrowed. There's enough bleed-through culturally for it to not be ridiculous.

 

No you go fuck command turkey, Oz.

Also, if we're going to have a conversation about Chinese Characters in other asian languages... 江南스타일

 

日本語を忘れないで。

 

Stop using that thar moon-speak.

 

Fucking communists.

 

If I gave.a.fuck what you thought, I'd have asked you. Looking for ideas, not nonhelpful bullshit like this.

I found a few I like, Insect is getting me the characters, but I'd still like one of our resident artists to come up with something.

 

A cursory google search comes up with things like this. Would you be looking for something more or less complex, cuz something of that level of detail could be made in Illustrator in one sitting with some relatively simple vector work.

 

Hi, Japanese-y person here. Sound of Silence pretty much nailed my point, but here's some background to give his claim a bit more credibility.

Impromptu and most likely somewhat inaccurate history lesson incoming. The bullet points of the following TL;DR should be correct, despite my lack of attention to precise historical detail.

Modern Japanese is a weird language, and by that, I mean it's a hodge-podge language kind of like English is, but the level of intermixed, mix-and-match tomfoolery is reflected to a much deeper degree.

The precursor language to Japanese was the language of the Yamato kingdom, which was without much of a written system at all. It's also an interesting footnote that the Yamato language had, from what we can tell, absorbed parts of the precursor/neighbor nation Izumo, but that's another topic for another time. Anyway, so we had the Yamato language. My history's a little rusty (I haven't studied this stuff since middle school, and that was 8 years ago), so bear with me.

Long story short, during the Asuka Period (4th to 7th Century) Prince Shotoku brought Chinese learning and Buddhism back in force from the Han kingdom during the 6th Century AD, and it's commonly accepted that this was when the Japanese language underwent a revision; they would speak their Yamato-derived Japanese commonly, but also speak Chinese as a learned language among the nobility, kind of like what Latin was for the Europeans. Soon, they began using written Chinese characters in conjunction with spoken Japanese. (the Han kingdom was in power, and so they were using Han characters - in Japanese, that would be Kan-ji. This is where the term Kanji comes from.).

Now, here's where it gets a bit funky. Japanese usage of Chinese characters meant that there were at least two ways to read the same character - one based on Japanese language, and one based on the original Chinese pronunciation. For example, the Japanese would have already had a word for, say, "Bird", and would use the Chinese notation to write it. Simultaneously, the imported Chinese would have also had its own pronunciation for the word. In modern Japanese, these are the Kun and On readings - Kun meaning 'meaning', and On denoting 'Sound' - the Japanese and Chinese-based pronunciations respectively. Modern Japanese for 'bird' is Tori, but the On reading is 'chou'. For historically Japanese words, we would use Tori. Yakitori, Kankodori, etc., we'd use the Kun reading. For imported or academic words like Chouruigaku for ornithology, we would use the On reading.

During the Heian Period, we also developed the Kana system of writing based on an earlier form of notation used to denote how to read Kanji (where each syllable is given its own character to write - there are 50 sounds in all) to make it easier to write and allowed the women of the period to write. Kanji and Chinese were a 'courtly' language (Murasaki Shikibu, or Lady Murasaki, was the author of The Tale of Genji, said to be one of the first novels in the world was written in kana). After the West 'opened' Japan, and the Meiji Restoration happened towards the end of the 19th Century, we needed a way to notate foreign words - there were way too many languages to borrow from, as opposed to there only being Chinese as was the case during the Asuka period. As a result, we have two systems of Kana - Hiragana, which was around since the Heian period, and Katakana, developed at the turn of the last century to address the influx of Western words.

Think of it this way. In modern Japan, we learn the 50 Hiragana first.This is kind of like learning the Alphabet. Then we learn the Katakana. This is like learning another way to write the Alphabet, but to be used for imported words, onomatopoeia, made up words (like Pokemon names!), and the like. Then we start learning Kanji during First Grade, and keep on learning progressively complex ones until we graduate High School. IIRC we learn 2400 or so Kanji over 12 years. There are more characters than that, but that's the commonly accepted amount we need to pretty much read anything that's not an arcane script or some notoriously hard text. If Hiragana and Katakana are analogous to the English Alphabet, then Kanji are essentially ways to contract and shorten words and meanings into one character. The aforementioned Yakitori - Yaki, meaning fried or roasted, and Tori, meaning bird. Using kana would take four letters, but using Kanji, we can notate that in two.

TL;DR, There is a marked difference between Chinese characters and Japanese kanji that might not be readily apparent to the Western eye. It however is very noticeable to anybody who has actually studied either of the languages (a thousand years of differentiation between the two languages goes a long way, and that's not even considering the Simplified Chinese developed under Mao's reforms), so if you want to use Chinese/Japanese looking characters with a Katana of all things, it might be a good idea to look into actual Japanese characters and consult someone who speaks the language so you don't end up getting a tattoo that anybody who grew up with it will laugh at behind your back.

Sorry for the TL;DR.

(I can draw too, though not nearly as well as an actual art student. My services are at your disposal, Middy. )

 

Not trying to be douche, but why are you getting a sword tattoo'd on your leg?

Just because?

Does it have meaning?

Number one thing you regret after a year has passed is meaningless tattoos.

OT: Do you want a sheathed sword or unsheathed? One of the guys in my dorm at college had a sheathed katana encircled by a dragon on his back. It was pretty cool. I can probably find a picture.

I asked him once why it was sheathed and he told me it was because real samurai never drew their blades in public unless they were set on killing someone.

I told him he was a jackass and he agreed.

 

I'm getting one because the idea was brought up by two people very special to me, and I said sure, wth, lets go. I wanted something simiplish for my first one, so some large badass dragon is out. A sword, which I've collected before, works for me, a good friend is a goddamned American Ninja who trains with swords, my wife almost gutted me with a katana, so shit, may as well use a katana.

The characters are going to come from a lady who is Insect's Master's wife. She can fill in the details. The characters do have special meaning though, and will be placed on several of us going. I wanted unsheathed, but the sheathed idea is growing on me.

Also, as a side note, there's been a long standing tradition here of banning anyone posting bullshit to a thread and not adding anything to it. Feel free to test that, it'll just mean less motherfuckers to plan for the next time I throw a party at a goddamned mansion.

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs16/f/2007/181/f/c/Katana_Tattoo_1_by_ShinodaArts.jpg this minus tribal stuff, http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs11/i/2006/229/2/3/____The_Katana____by_DragonSpirit469.jpg this ones pretty bad ass.

 

It seems you've got a pretty good idea of what you want, which is great. I just recently got my first tattoo and I did a whole heap of research on he web, searching for the exact design I wanted and the like but all my research seemed to point to the same thing - find a decent tattooist and allow him to design a custom piece.

So I collected a few pictures of what I thought I might like before finding the best tattooist in my area that I could and going in to discuss my ideas with him. He took all the ideas I had and asked what I liked about them, how I wanted it to flow and the like before sketching a custom piece for me. And you know what? I couldn't be happier with my piece. It feels original and more a part of me, because I know that its unique.

The tattooist was stoked as well, he told me that most people in his profession love making custom pieces and would prefer to do that then just copy a design given to them.

My advice to you would be to take a couple of sketches that you like and talking to a professional. In the end they would know more than most of the site about tattoo design and most tattooists seem happy to give free consultations.

FWIW that second design you put up above would be awesome in my opinion.

Good luck.

 

What kind of style/s do you think you'd go for, Middy? Realistic? Conceptualised?

 

Conceptualized probably. I've seen som. e katanas mixed withlightsaber hilts that's fucking awesome. I was trying to go with a here slap this on design, since by the time we're at the beachhouse, I've bought food and gas, I'll likely be hurting for a ton of cash. My wife wants a modified monopoly Cthulu, google it, its adorable. I didn't want to get something custom because I was trying to keep the price down. Also good lord the inluded browser on this phone is fucking horrible, keeps sending the cursor to different spots and I wind up typing next sentence in the middle of an old one. Tapatalk worth getting???

 

Most certainly in my opinion. I love the damn thing.