Hi! I have two half-Japanese characters in a story whose mom’s last name was Kato or Katou. (Not sure if I want the “U.”) I guess (some?) Japanese families have crests, and I thought Kato (“increase wisteria”) would have that tree in theirs. I also read that after a while, Japanese people started depicting wisteria flowers as rising instead of dangling from branches because they thought the latter would bring the family misfortune. Does anybody know what the Kato crest looks like?
3 comments
[That’s](https://irohakamon.com/kamon/fuji/katoufuji.html) the one I found.
To be honest, it’s not likely there’s any one particular family crest for the family name Katou (the u at the end is more accurate to the Japanese romanization, but often omitted). It’s a pretty common surname. In fact, I just googled it, and it’s the 10th most common surname in the entire country.
Unless this family is connected to a specific historical clan, then the family crest could theoretically be anything. Most families only use crests for decorations for Children’s Day, the Doll Festival, or Shich-Go-San in any case. Quite a few don’t even know if their family ever adopted one.
Googling 藤家紋 gets you a ton of variation in the image search section, so I’d suggest picking one you like to describe from there.
We can’t guess family crests from family names. If you see 10 different Katou-San, it’s possible that they have each different crest.
Also there were families who redesigned their dangling wisteria family crests, but there are still a lot of families with the dangling versions. So nothing wrong with using the dangling wisteria if you like it!
Actually, my maternal family has been using one of the dangling wisteria crests.
My mom uses it even now just because she thinks it prettier than my paternal family’s crest.
(Neither of our family name nor her maiden name is Katou. They even don’t have 藤(wisteria) letter at all. So, there is no way that anyone can guess the family crest from the name.)