Kanji Tattoo Checker

Paste your planned tattoo text and this tool runs the checks a machine can actually run: whether the characters are Japanese at all (or simplified Chinese from the wrong font), whether the words exist in the language, and whether your text appears on our list of famously embarrassing choices. What a machine can't judge — nuance, tone, whether it says what you mean — gets flagged honestly and routed to a free human check.

What each result means

• 🔴 Simplified Chinese detected — your source used a Chinese font or a Chinese translation. Characters like 爱 (for 愛) and 梦 (for 夢) are not Japanese forms, and Japanese readers spot them instantly. The tool shows you the correct Japanese character for each.
• 🔴 Known problem word — your text matches our curated list of real-world tattoo disasters: menu items, signage words, and words whose register makes them read like paperwork instead of poetry.
• 🟡 Not a standard word — the dictionary doesn't recognize part of your text. That can be fine (names, coined phrases) or a disaster (random characters glued together). No machine can tell the difference — this is precisely when you want a human.
• 🟢 No machine-detectable problems — the structure is sound. This is not the same as "get it tattooed"; it means the remaining questions are human ones.

The simplified Chinese problem, explained

Chinese and Japanese share thousands of characters, but mainland China simplified many of theirs in the 1950s, and Japan didn't follow the same path. The result: 愛 (Japanese) and 爱 (simplified Chinese) are the same word wearing different faces — and the simplified one famously lost the 心 (heart) from its middle. Design tools default to whatever font is installed, so a huge share of "Japanese" tattoos sold online are actually set in Chinese fonts. This checker catches the common cases character by character.

Why we don't pretend to check meaning

Plenty of sites will "verify" your tattoo with a dictionary lookup and a green checkmark. We think that's the most dangerous interface design in this niche, because meaning lives in register and context — 勉強 really does mean study, and it still reads like homework on a bicep. A machine that hands out green lights teaches you to trust it exactly where it's blind.

So this tool does the opposite: it catches the mechanical failures with certainty, shows you how Japanese actually segments and reads your text, and then tells you plainly that the final judgment is human work. Ours is free — see how we evaluate characters, or browse the word list with native verdicts and rated tattoo ideas first.

FAQ

My text got a green result. Am I safe?

Safer — not safe. Green means the characters are Japanese and the words exist. It cannot mean "this expresses what you intend with the tone you intend." For something permanent, spend the extra two minutes and have a person read it.

Can it check a name?

Names usually come back 🟡, because personal-name spellings aren't dictionary words — that's expected, not an error. Name checking is judgment work: whether the characters chosen for the sound also carry meanings worth wearing. That's exactly what we do by hand, for free.

Why is the embarrassing-words list so specific?

Because every entry is real. 冷奴 (chilled tofu), 無料 (free of charge), 台所 (kitchen) — these aren't hypotheticals; they're documented tattoos. The list grows as we see new ones, which is one more reason to send us yours before the needle rather than after.