Anarchy in Chinese / Japanese...

無政府 is a Chinese and Japanese word for anarchy.

This literally reads “without government.”

無警察 means the state of anarchy.

More literally it means “without rules or judges.”

This combination of characters makes sense in Korean and Chinese but with a meaning closer to “without police.” 無警察 is kind of a weird selection for a wall scroll and a rather obscure idea (a couple of customers begged for this term, so we added it).

The first character means confused, dirty, muddy, or mixed.

The second character means confusion and disorder.

Together, these characters mean chaos and sometimes extended to mean a type of anarchy.

This term is often used in a less-than-literal term to describe anything in disarray. Someone might use this word in a sentence like, “My kitchen is in a state of chaos” or “my life is so chaotic.”

Please note that Japanese use an alternate/simplified version of the second character of chaos - it also happens to be the same simplification used in mainland China. Click on the character to the right if you want the Japanese/Simplified version of this two-character chaos calligraphy.