Man spends £800 on huge Samurai tattoo before spotting devastating mistake

16 March 2023 , 09:53

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He's always been fascinated by Samurai culture (Image: Preply)

A man who loves all things to do with Samurais chose to get his very own Samurai tattoo - only to learn afterward that it was spelled incorrectly and had no actual meaning. Tattoo lover Chris is said to love "samurais and the code they lived by", and knew exactly what he wanted when he sat down in the tattooist's chair.

Samurai warriors lived their lives according to seven guiding principles known as Bushido: integrity, respect, heroic courage, honour, compassion, honesty and sincerity, and duty and loyalty.

When it came to choosing his £800 ink, Chris, from London, wanted to draw from the Japanese quote, 'It's better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war'. He wouldn't have been able to fit the quote in its entirety on his arm, so decided instead to just use the words 'gardener and warrior'. Unfortunately, the artwork didn't end up quite as he hoped.

The tat set him back £800 (Preply)

A few days after he got his ink, Chris was in for a shock when a friend that the tat was in fact spelled wrong, with the artist having missed out a line. This meant the quote, which had felt to be of such great significance to him, didn't actually have any meaning at all.

Fortunately, Chris was able to get the design amended for free, however, body art lovers have been warned to be careful when opting for a quote in a language they aren't familiar with.

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New research from online learning platform, Preply, shows that Japanese is the most popular language for tattooed quotes with more than 230,000 Google searches for tattoos in Japanese made every year.

Fortunately, it was free for Chris to get the tattoo fixed (Preply)

With this in mind, lettering tattoo artist, Hinin Prod advised: "When looking at the most commonly used languages in the field of lettering tattoos, the social prism and its influences should be acknowledged.

"In multicultural cities, you meet many people from different cultures and environments. I have many requests for lettering in Japanese, Latin, Chinese, or Arabic. Old Nordic runes are also popular among 'ink heads' and could also be treated as lettering in their own way."

Hinin, who is from Cologne, Germany, continued: "All I can recommend to others is to choose the tattoo artist wisely and let him or her be creative with your idea. Do your research and always try to get a native speaker to advise on your language tattoos."

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Julia Banim