Encylopedia of Body Adornment.pdf - Print My Tattoo

J
JAPAN
Not only is Japanese tattooing known to be one of the most sophisticated in terms
of imagery, style, and technique in the world, but it is one of the oldest tattooing
traditions in the world as well, dating back to the hunter-gatherers of the Jomon
period (10,000 BC–300 BC). Archeologists have found clay human figures called
dogu that have marks around the eyes, cheeks, forehead, and lips that may indicate
tattooing, which was being practiced in other cultures during this period as well.
In addition, the women of the Ainu, an ethnic group living on an island at the
northernmost end of Japan, have worn upper lip tattoos for hundreds and perhaps
thousands of years. Tattoos were worn as well by farmers in the Yayoi period
(300 BC–AD 300), the period that saw the emergence of Japanese culture, as a
marker of status, like many Polynesian cultures. In addition, the tattoos used religious
symbols to ward off evil spirits. Again, clay figurines from the period show
facial tattoos.
As in other stratified societies, such as in the Greco-Roman world, tattoos in
the Kofun period (AD 300–600), during which modern Japanese political organizations
emerged, became associated with criminality and were used not only
to punish and identify criminals (often with the mark of their specific crime) but
to identify untouchable classes as well. Chinese attitudes that associated tattooing
with barbarism helped to further stigmatize tattoos during this period, given
that China governed the region at this time. On the other hand, punitive tattooing
may also be linked to the origins of decorative tattooing because, as in other states
in which tattoos were used punitively, members of the underclass often modified
those tattoos in order to disguise the original meanings, perhaps creating decorative
markings in the process.
It wasn’t until the late Edo period (1804–1868), however, that what we know
of as modern decorative tattooing, or horimono, developed in Edo (now Tokyo),
which was experiencing a cultural revolution of sorts. Prior to this time, lovers,
courtesans, and prostitutes would often have the name of a lover written on the
upper part of the arm, with the kanji or character for inochi (life), symbolizing a
pledge of eternal love, added. These pledge tattoos probably derived from earlier
“love dots” or small moles tattooed on the hand. But the major influence on the development
of the sophisticated Japanese tattoo form were the wood-block print, or
ukiyo-e, artists whose colorful and complex designs would later be seen in tattoos.
The most important of the ukiyo-artists in terms of the development of tattooing
in Japan was Kuniyoshi, whose 1827 illustrations of the Suikoden, a Chinese novel
translated into Japanese, included heavily tattooed warriors with mythical heroes,