温故知新 onkochishin Respect the Past, Create the New

温故知新 is Confucius's description of a teacher: someone who goes back over what they have learned and finds something new in it. Commentators gave the first character two pictures, seek out and reheat, and Japanese readers still read it either way. Japanese dictionaries now read the phrase as study of the past. Whether it is for study, teaching or work is yours.

On the designs VD4C and HD3B, Master Takase writes: "Look closely at the first character. Where one stroke of 日 belongs, I brushed a red dot. In traditional calligraphy this is not done, and that is the idea, the new inside the old. It is also an homage to Japanese roots. Japan is written 日本, and the red dot is the sun as on the Japanese flag. So both a respect for the traditional, and a touch of the new with color inside the traditional calligraphy."

The line is a saying of Confucius as the Analects records it, chapter 為政, saying eleven, about who is fit to teach; the four characters without the connective 而 already stand as a phrase in a Chinese edict of 23 BC, and a Japanese edict of 703 is the earliest Japanese use the 日本国語大辞典 records.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 温故知新.

Each design is Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's hand-brushed calligraphy of the word or phrase on this page, delivered as a PDF you can print. Every PDF includes the line art, so a tattoo artist or a craftsperson can work from the outline as well as the brushed image.

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