Black flash design of the Japanese kanji for strength above the word STRENGTH in blackletter lettering, on a white background.

Kanji for strength with blackletter lettering

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A bold black brush-style kanji character meaning strength sits above the word STRENGTH, set in a blackletter typeface. The design is solid black on a plain white background, with the kanji's brush strokes showing slight variation in thickness. The composition is centred and simple, with the kanji and lettering stacked vertically.

Japanese Lettering Kanji Strength Lettering Blackletter Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and stop pretending you can't hear over the fiddles. Pour the bride another glass of that sweet sherry, because this is the story of Ada Penrose and the blacksmith's lad who wanted her hand and nothing else. Her father kept a forge behind the chapel at Gilmorton, and he had made a rule that no suitor touched the bellows until he had lifted the iron bar from its hook and held it level for the length of a hymn.

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Four lads tried before the Sunday. Two cried off by the second verse. The third, a farmer's son with arms like hams, dropped the bar on his own boot and hopped out into the lane swearing. The fourth was Tom Quarrie, thin as a rake and quiet as milk, and everyone expected him to fold like the rest. He took the bar in both hands, set his feet wide on the cobbles, and when Ada came to the door with flour on her apron he did not look at her. He looked at the iron.

The hymn ran long, and the bar was heavier than it looked. Halfway through the second verse his arms began to shake. Ada's father reached for his pipe, certain of the outcome, and that was when Tom spoke, not loudly, just to the metal: 'You are heavier than my mother's grief, and I have carried that.' Then he lifted, and held, and the bar stayed true until the amen.

Ada's father took the pipe from his mouth and said strength was only stubbornness with good timing. Tom said he had learned that from Ada, who had never once in her life let a door close on her. They were married the next Saturday, and the bar still hangs above the forge door, and if you look at its end you will see two sets of initials scratched where the hands went. Now, the sherry is nearly gone, so somebody fetch the fiddler back before he falls asleep in the hay.