justice

義

ㄧˋ yì

Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.

Script

Characters

Layout

What is right, and the setting right of what is not.

Before you commit

Choose with care義 is duty and rightness, closer to righteousness than to legal justice. For justice as a system or a cause, 正義 is the word. 義 has a second life meaning adopted or artificial. The dictionary's own gloss for that sense is "false — having the name but not the reality, not by blood": 義父 an adoptive father, 義子 an adopted son, 義齒 a false tooth, 義肢 a prosthetic limb. That last one is not archaic — 義肢 is the term used in Taiwan's national health insurance regulations and on hospital department signs. Context usually settles which 義 is meant, but a Taiwanese reader meets both.

JapaneseIn Japan 義 is the giri of social obligation. It reads there as duty first and justice second.

At small sizesThirteen strokes with a crowded lower half. Not ideal below a couple of centimetres.

Cultural noteThe sense most Chinese readers reach for first is 義氣 — standing by your friends at cost to yourself. It is a compliment in ordinary speech. It is also the word Taiwanese gang culture uses about itself: a Reporter investigation into how gangs recruit teenagers describes loyalty to the temple and 義氣 between brothers as the boy's passport into that world. Both readings are live at once.

Meaning

Rightness; duty; what one owes.

The moral sense: acting rightly regardless of advantage.

Other characters for “justice”

What to do next

Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.

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