Japanese Tattoos – A Brief History
Evidence of tattooing in Japan extends back to over 12,000 years back. Archaelogists have found clay figures called dogu that show markings around the forehead, eyes, cheeks and lips and have advised that these can suggest tattoos.In the Kofun period (300″600 AD) tattoos were used as a technique of marking criminals as a punishment (similar to that used on slaves in ancient Rome), regularly with marks picturing their crime.
Until the Edo period (1600″1868 AD) the role of tattoos in Japanese society sundry seriously. Tattooed marks were still used as a type of punishment, although it was during the latter years (post 1800) of the Edo period that Japanese decorative tattooing (or horimono) began to develop into the advanced art form it is sometimes known as today.
The most significant artist in terms of the development of Japanese tattoing was Kuniyoshi who illustrated a Chinese novel called Suikoden which had been interpreted into Japanese [*T]. Kuniyoshi’s illustrations showed heavily tattooed soldiers with tattoos of koi, dragons, aggressive tigers, mythical beasts and religious photographs.
In the 1800s talented woodblock artists started to expand and use their talents and tools as tattoo artists. The method known as tebori (‘to carve by hand’) was employed whereby steel needles were secured in a row to bamboo rods to were pushed into the skin.
Tebori (hand-tattooing) has largely been replaced now by Yobori (machine tattooing). Tebori give a much better finish as it creates a gradation of tones that are tough to achieve using a tattoo machine.
Standard Japanese Tattoos (irezumi) are carried out by expert (often illusive) tattooists utilising the Tebori strategy. It is ascertained that There are about one hundred recognized practitioners of alive today in Japan.
Full body irezumi (tebori) is painful, time-consuming and expensive: a normal standard body suit (covering the arms, back, higher legs and chest, but leaving an untattooed ‘river ‘ down the center of the body where an unbottoned shirt or coat could hide the tattoo) can take almost a decade to complete, with weekly visits to the tattooist and can cost higher than US$30-50,000.
It is calculated that roughly twenty thousand Japanese have half body tattoos, with roughly two hundred carrying on with a full body tattoo.
Scholars are doubtful still as to who wore such tattoos.
At the beginning of the Meiji period the Japanese government made tattooing illegal as a way of tidying up the Japanese image, which drove tattooing underground, and soon tattoos became sort of a status symbol inside criminal gangs. For many years, conventional Japanese tattoos were linked with the Yakuza, Japan’s notorious mafia (even after re-legalisation in 1945). It is estimated that about 70% of Yakuza members are tattooed.
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