First things first. The illustration above is the cover of the book Japan's Tattoo Arts: Horimitsu's World which is available for purchase at the website keibunsha.
The name Horimitsu is a kind of nom de plume or 'nom de tattoo artist.' It is a combination of 'Hori' --part of one of the Japanese words for 'tattoo' --and 'mitsu' which is probably part of the artist's given name.
Yesterday's blog post showed tattooed women. To be fair I include the book cover to illustrate tattooed men. The illustration is not as artistic or striking as the pictures in yesterday's post, but in time that imbalance will be corrected.
Now for the title of this blog entry: My Face Is Red... My original intention today was to link to a book on Japanese tattoos available free from the gutenberg.org website. I downloaded the book several years ago. When I wandered over to gutenberg this morning and searched I could not find a trace of the book. Either it has been removed from gutenberg, its title is not what I remembered and the title is not any of the words I entered into the gutenberg search engine, or my memory is fooling me. In any case, I must admit to my failure to find the sought-after book.
My reason for seeking this book is that it had a clear discussion of the history of tattoos in Japan. As I recall from my reading tattooing began in Japan quite a long time ago as a punishment for prisoners. People sentenced to prison would be tattooed, often on easily-visible parts of their bodies, so the rest of the population could quickly identify them as offenders and could avoid them if they escaped from prison.
It was only later in history that tattoos spread to the rest of the Japanese population. As I recall the telling, people who served their prison terms and returned to society often engaged in additional criminal activity. If they were successful criminals they elaborated their tattoos and wore them as a mark of pride. Into modern times criminal elements in Japan--referred to in Japanese as yakuza, roughly equivalent to the word Mafia--wear elaborate tattoos, which makes them easily distinguishable from the rest of the population. Well, actually, yakuza also cut off parts of one of their own fingers as a sign of membership in a gang, but that's another story.
In more recent times many artists gravitated toward out-of-the-mainstream societal elements and adopted their tattoo habit. As I recall the story told in the missing gutenberg book, artistic tattoos did not become a trend in Japan until just a few centuries ago. In any case, until a few years ago the average Japanese citizen abhorred defacing one's body, so considered anyone wearing a tattoo a social outcast, whether for criminal or artistic reasons.
Got that story? Now forget it.
After failing to find the lost book I did some googling and found many websites which contradict the story I related above.
Some websites claim the Yayoi and Jomon people--the ancient precursors of the modern Japanese people and now-extinct inhabitant of the Japanese islands--wore tattoos. The same can be said for the Ainu people, who pre-date the modern Japanese people and still inhabit parts of the northern Japanese island. Women Ainu sport tattoos. Other blog historians claim tattoos were worn by many non-criminal elements in Japan's past, well before the era when authorities branded criminals. Written and archeological records of tattoo wearing can be found in many periods of Japanese history. So there goes the neat story I told at the beginning of today's post.
I can see that establishing a correct historic record for tattoos is not a simple cut and paste job. If the Japan story is complicated, imagine the China story and the Korea story. Nah, I don't think I'll go there.
Rather than trying to write a definitve history, I will devote this blog to a random stroll through the visual element of tattoos. I hope to find interesting--even striking--illustrations of tattoo art and reproduce them here. In any order which strikes me.
One thing I feel honor-bound to do is to cite my sources. I have no intention of stealing anyone else's work. There is a well-established doctrine in copyright law of 'Fair Use.' When a person discusses another person's copywritten material it is considered Fair Use to limit the reproduced work to a few sentences or a few pictures from the larger body of copywritten material. And to cite the original source. Good enough.
Please note that yesterday's post did not cite the original source. The original source is written in Japanese characters. I am in the process of trying to get an English-language link to Amazon Japan or get Amazon in the US to offer for sale in the US the tattoo works I referred to yesterday. And perhaps get them offered for sale in other countries. I'll keep this blog abreast of the progress of this project.
In any case, check in again for examples of Asian tattoo art. So many skins, so little time.
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