Tattoo History - Japan

Even before the extensive tattoo art overtook everything else in popularity in Japan, the people already painted their bodies. During the Heina Period, the first cultural blossoming of the country (749 - 1185), a cut and dried white painted face was a sign of beauty among aristocrats. In the 17th century this white painted face became a sign for the elegant Japanese entertaining girls, the Geishas. The popular Chinese musical comedy Kabuki on the other hand used artfully painted colored masks to transfer it's viewers to a fantasy world.

Of course tattoos themselves have long and strong tradition in Japan too. Supposedly already during the Jomon Period, the Early Stone Age which was about 5.000 to 300 before Christ, tattoos where applied as a cultist ritual but no proof was ever found. The earliest proof that was found was from the Yayou Period (300 B.C. - 300) in which men were decorated with rank tattooings. The Ainu, the natives to Japan, who had no ethic relations to the Japaneses, tattooed their woman according to religion and social status and a completed tattoo counted as a status symbol for a grown up, married woman. The Ainu were displaced increasingly with the moving in of a population group which reached Japan from the Korea. The only thing that survived from the Ainu culture are their tribal tattoos. With the beginning of the Chinese culture tattoos where seen as primitive markings from the barbaric people living in the surrounding countries of china. Since Japan oriented itself very strongly on China the tribal tattoos disappeared more and more and skin markings where only used to designate criminals.

The high time of this form of punishment was the Edo Period (1603 - 1868), named after the early name Tokyo's. Criminals where marked by the Shoguns for delicti like the handling of stolen goods, theft or fraud with stipes on their arms or faces. The number, formation and placement of the tattooed stripes differed from each city their were in. This way it was ensured by law that the banishment of a criminal was held up. The Japanese society worked on the basis of an individual belonging to a group and punishment tattoos were therefore always a sing of ejection. The ejected criminals formed gangs in which the tattoos developed into signs of a certain affiliation. Vagabonding soldiers and street fighters got facial tattoos, to scare the normal citizens, and also tattooed their backs and arms with skulls, dragons and characters. Those tattoos were referred to as Datebori among the regular citizens.

At about the same time during the 17th century it became an isolated fashion to get tattooed voluntarily. Lovers carried the name of their partners, priests carried phrases of prayers and the daughters of joy in the major cities, the Kishobori, carried small love vows from their customers. In the middle of the 18th century the from the 14th century originating Chinese novel "Shui hu chuan" was transfused into Japanese by Takai Ranzan as so called Suikoden. The story of four rebels fighting against the government gained such popularity due to the similarity of what happened in Japan at this time and the Japanese were all also fed up with the military dictatorship of the Shoguns. The Suikoden were provided with wooden cuts of the artist Katsushika Hokusai who, through the original Chinese text, only knew that one of the rebels carried tattooed paeonien blossoms, the other one dragons, the third cherry blossom patterns and the fourth pine branches. In his illustrations the four rebels carried those designs all over their bodies.

In 1827 more wooden cuts were published by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. He made sixteen out of the four rebels and illustrated their bodies much more complex with pictures of leopards, crows, monkeys, octopuses and nine tailed cats. Kuniyasho was also the one to embed the single motives in a wave and cloud background covering the back, chest and upper arms. The Japanese tattoo owes it's most important impulse to those two artistic transfers of a text. In the beginning of the 19th century, the from the rulers recruited fire fighters of Edo, who saw themselves as the guardians of the people, identified themselves with the heroes of the Chinese novel and had similar motives applied. But also fans of the novel adopted the tattoos of the illustrations and large tattoos appeared for the first time.

Ever since tattoo masters like Karakusagonta (from Asakusa), Darumakin and Iso (Yanaka), Charibun (Asakusa), Horitsun (Kameido), Ichimatsu (Asakusa), Kane (Yottsuya), Horiichi (Osaka) and the most famous of all Horiuno, used those pictures as templates to create their own skin art, deepened their symbolism and expanded them, thereby creating the difficult art of the Irezumi. The from that time originating designs are the so called Horimono. Every person that was tattooed in the middle of the 19th century wore a so called suit made of those designs, covering the back, buttocks, chest, stomach as well as the loins and reaching until the middle of the upper arms and legs. Later Kawa tattoos came and strengthened the impression of a suit by leaving out a stripe of skin in the middle of the chest, stomach and upper leg.

When the Edo dynasty fell in 1868 and Japan opened itself up to the west in the Meiji Period at the end of the 19th century the rulers prohibited tattooing due to the fear of contempt from the europeans. But exactly the opposite happened. Tattoo artists found a lot of willing customers among the european visitors and some tattoo parlors even stayed officially in business. A very popular tattoo artist in that time was Hori Chiyo who, among other things, tattooed a dragon on the fore arm of the british Prince of Wales, tattooed the Duchess of Edinburgh, Queen Olga of Greece and also the later Czar Nicolaus II. Hori Chiyo was considered the emperor among the "Kings of Tattoo Artists". The Japanese Irezumi with it's bright colors, complex patterns, expressive designs and it's anatomically designed Kanto style, applied especially considering the muscle structure of the tattooed to give movement to the design through the movement of the muscles, the Nihon Irezumi, became very popular around the 1970's and was well established through Irezumi masters like Horihide in close collaboration with american tattoo artists like Sailor Jerry Collins or Don Ed Hardy.

But in Japan there are still dived emotions about the Irezumi today. In some baths and spas Japan's is the entry for tattooed persons not permitted because they "spoil the good mood of the other guests". But tattoo art mostly has a bad image in Nippon because it is often brought in connection with the famous Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, which gained importance after the second world war, whose clans identified themselves with tattoos.

The Japanese who get tattooed see to it that they get their tattoos applied from the Horishi, the Japanese tattoo masters, who master the art of the Tebori: The artist paints the Sumi, the tattoo ink, onto the skin with a brush and then plucks the ink under the skin using a bamboo stick, the Tebori Stick, with a bundle of needles at the end, the Hari. The most famous today's Horishi specializing in the continuation of the Tebori art are Horihide, Horihiro, who often demonstrates is abilities at conventions in Europe and the United States, or the tattoo master Horitoshi.

Horiyoshi III even opened the Tokyo Tattoo Museum and the Japan Tattoo Institute sees to it that the art of the Tebori won't be forgotten with the continuous release of books, videos and CD roms about well renowned past and present japanese artists. But amongst the younger generation western designs have also become very popular. Horihito is one of the well known artists of another type of Japanese tattoo masters who not only also masters the tattoo machine but also the designs from Europe and the United States.

back to tattoo history