A Japanese developer, in a room in Matsuyama.

Quick orientation, since most travelers haven’t heard of it: I’m in Matsuyama, on Shikoku— the smaller of Japan’s main islands. This is the city 夏目漱石 (Sōseki) taught in and made famous in his novel Botchan, the city 正岡子規 (Masaoka Shiki) rewrote haiku from. It is also home to 道後温泉 (Dōgo Onsen), a bathhouse that has been quietly working for around three thousand years. I was born here, raised here, and I read and write Japanese as a first language. It is the right size of place to take ink culture seriously without rushing.

I’ve chosen not to publish my name or my face. Two reasons, neither of them interesting: a private life I’d like to keep private, and the fact that this is a small one-person operation that may remain small. What you can verify is that every page is written by someone who has spent enough time on the internet — and seen enough kanji tattoos go wrong — to want to do something about it.

Every meaning check, every candidate, every certificate that leaves this site passes through one desk in Matsuyama. If I am not sure about a character’s cultural weight, I say so — in writing, on the certificate. If I think you should not get the tattoo, I say that too, politely, and you get a full refund. That is the whole deal.

The Free Meaning Check is genuinely free. It costs me about $0.001 per query to run; I will not quietly paywall it.

The Tattoo Ready Pack ($29) is for people who are actually getting a tattoo. It bundles the things every tattoo artist asks for — actual-size PDF, HD SVG, placement preview, artist brief, certificate of meaning, cultural context — into a single zip. AI-assisted with native-checked vocabulary. If you change your mind before downloading, full refund.

The Expert Review ($59) is the same pack with one extra layer: I personally review your design within 48 hours and back it with an Accuracy Guarantee. If I make an error, you get a full refund. There is a hard cap of 30 reviews per month so that I can actually look at each one.

The name is the thesis.

The whole point of this service is to be consulted before the needle. Most kanji tattoo regret stories are authored after the fact — when a Japanese stranger, kind enough not to mention it in the moment, eventually has to. There is no good fix for that. There is, however, a good prevention.

Please — genuinely — find someone who can read it before you go. If you know a Japanese friend, ask them. If you don’t, come here and use the Free Meaning Check. Either works. What matters is that the character you wear for the rest of your life is the one you think it is.