Life Taking Sword (satsujinken)

Scroll to see all 9 Japanese Life Taking Sword tattoo designs

Here we offer 9 different hand-brushed Japanese Life Taking Sword tattoo designs by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase. For these Life Taking Sword tattoo designs the fonts are different, but the characters and the meaning are the same. So order the style you like - the meaning is the same for each design.

Life Taking Sword in Japanese is 殺人剣 which is read satsujinken. The Japanese phrase satsujinken means Life Taking Sword and refers to the use of a sword with the purpose of taking a life. In contrast the phrase Life Giving Sword (katsujinken) refers to the use of a sword to protect or save a life. satsujinken is composed of the kanji 殺人 (read satsujin) meaning "killer; murderer" and 剣 Sword (ken). Hence another translation may be "Killing Sword".

Note that the Japanese word satsujin is often translated as murder but this is not strictly correct as satsujin only means "kill a person" which includes murder but it also may mean killing someone evil or killing someone in defense of oneself, one's family or one's country - so it does not have the strictly negative meaning that the word "murder" has.

With your order, you will receive everything you need for the perfect Life Taking Sword in Japanese Tattoo. Your design comes as an Adobe PDF file which means it will print exactly as Master Takase brushed the design and, of course, it includes the line art (also called a stencil) which your tattoo artist must have to properly ink the design.

The Adobe PDF file completely documents the design and contains everything your tattoo artist needs to properly ink the design. Your tattoo artist does not need to know Japanese.