to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:31 AM
subject: Kanji translations
Hey there! I totally LOVE your blog!
ok, so I have 2 different Kanji tattoos. I researched them myself, and was after the Japanese meanings of the characters. I didn't trust a tattoo shop book for either one. The fire/Ice tattoo is supposed to me "to be devoted". The kanji is composed out of the negative space. I was after a verb form, and I am most worried about this one.
Tell me I did it right!! Otherwise, back to the needle I go!
Thanks,
A
Granted this tattoo intended to be read from Japanese perspective, but ?? literally means "no head" in Chinese, in other words "lack of common sense".
Alan has the following to add:
The tattoo is evidently ???, which appears to be a "slangy" way of writing the Japanese verb "hamaru" which in itself is a slang way to say "be a fan of," "be absorbed in" or maybe "be devoted to" something like a rock band or a manga or some other pop culture phenomenon.
Originally, the verb hamaru was written ?? or ?? (or sometimes ???), but evidently due to the influence of the noun ?? [botto], which means "devotion to" or "absorption in" something, people started writing the word like ??? but still pronouncing it hamaru. Perhaps one reason why people started writing the word with these new characters is because both of the old ones ? and ? were removed from common use in Japanese.
This use of different characters to write words is called ??? (ateji) in Japanese. These ??? can be used on a whim and there are no particular rules except what becomes popular.
Without common sense, indeed!
Emoticon Emoticon