武
Symbols Protection
samurai
士
ㄨˇ ㄕˋ wǔ shì
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
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
A Japanese word for a Japanese figure. Chinese writes it with two characters meaning martial gentleman, and the single glyph Japanese uses means something else in Chinese.
Before you commit
Choose with care武士 is a Chinese word with two thousand years behind it: 勇武有力的人, a man of martial strength, in 莊子, and 全副武裝的精銳士兵, elite armoured troops, in 史記. Taiwan's Ministry of Education lists the Japanese and European sense third, after both of those, and the same dictionary carries 圓桌武士 for the Knights of the Round Table. English tattoo guides that call 武士 a Japanese-only word are wrong about that. What they are right about is the modern feel: 武士刀 and 武士道 dominate everyday usage, so a lone 武士 does lean Japanese today. If you want warrior without that lean, 戰士 or 勇士 is more neutral.
JapaneseIf you want it read as Japanese, 侍 is the character Japan uses. Two things to know. In Chinese the same glyph means to serve or attend — the two senses share a root, since the Japanese word comes from さぶらう, to attend on someone. And 侍 is one stroke-group away from 待, meaning to wait: the difference is the left radical, 亻 against 彳. Tattoo guides name this as the most common samurai-tattoo mistake, so check it with your artist.
At small sizesTwo characters, both light - eight strokes and three. This pair holds up unusually well small and on curved placements.
Meaning
A warrior; the standard Chinese word for a samurai.
What Chinese subtitles and history books use for the Japanese warrior class.
Other characters for “samurai”
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.
Related concepts