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Japanese motifs such as this swimming goldfish also make wonderful stand-alone designs.
In traditional American tattooing, skulls and roses are often paired. Here, waves and peonies replace the roses, underscoring the life-and-death theme and giving the tattoo a decidedly Japanese feel.
During 20th century, one-point tattoos were the dominant style in the West, while large interwoven designs were the most common in Japan. But by the early 1980s, something funny was happening: a new generation of Japanese born after World War II who were into American and British culture wanted foreign-looking one-point tattoos. Around that time, American tattooer Don Ed Hardy inked Western-style designs on the members of the Black Cats, a popular Japanese rockabilly band. Just like that, a clear division between the words “tattoo” and “irezumi” was drawn. Tattoos were fun and fashionable. Irezumi were scary. This separate terminology has relaxed considerably. Some Japanese tattooers now use the words interchangeably. Others, however, still do not.
WHY JAPANESE TATTOOS CHANGED
Modern life influences the way tattoos are executed on physical and subconscious levels. There are no truly traditional Japanese tattoos because people don’t live in a traditional world. Western fashion, the internet, Japanese TV shows, and Hollywood movies all create a vastly different visual landscape. All of this impacts tattoos, reflecting contemporary visual culture. This is most evident in anime-infused geek ink.
Even if the designs hark back to an earlier era, modern tattooers can put a contemporary spin on their work with eye-popping hues. Colors like bright oranges, strong navy blues and vibrant purples are not originally part of irezumi’s color set. It wasn’t until the decades after the Second World War that a greater variety of hues like purple and orange started being used in Japanese tattooing in a big way. A whole host of new designs followed, along with a new way of thinking. Irezumi underwent one of its most significant changes ever.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Irezumi are still an underground phenomenon in Japan; indeed, that’s part of their appeal. Because of this, irezumi are enveloped in mythos and misinformation. My coauthor Hori Benny and I have seen plenty of non-Japanese with either faux or downright awful “Japanese-style” tattoos. Over the course of researching, interviewing, and writing this book, we consulted numerous friends, colleagues, experts, and total strangers with the goal of introducing and decoding the most prevalent motifs so that English speakers can have a better understanding of their meaning and hopefully get Japanese tattoos that can be worn with pride—as they should be.
The Birth of the Tattooing Machine
The Electrical Revolution
Samuel O’Reilly patented the first tattoo machine in 1891. The New York City tattooist based his device on Thomas Edison’s motor-powered electric pen. Twenty days later, in London, Thomas Riley filed a patent for a single-coil tattoo machine, which had been created from, of all things, a modified doorbell.
TATTOOIST PROFILE
HORIYOSHI III
JAPAN’S MOST FAMOUS TATTOOIST
“Are you ready?” Horiyoshi III calls to the customer in the waiting area. The unassuming client looks to be in his late 20s and seems like a typical button-down white-collar worker. He enters, greets the tattoo master with a bow, and undresses, revealing an irezumi bodysuit. He lies down on his stomach. On his back is a depiction of Buddhist hell—Horiyoshi III’s handiwork.
With international exhibitions of his paintings, numerous publications on his tattoos and his designs, and even a clothing line named after him, Horiyoshi III is perhaps Japan’s most famous tattooist. He is also a dedicated scholar of the form. The studio, a second-story walk-up in Yokohama, is lined with books. “I have another couple thousand or so at home,” he says. “This is because I’m serious about learning.”
Horiyoshi III wasn’t always a keen student. “Growing up,” he admits, “I was a hoodlum.” Born Yoshihito Nakano in 1946, he began working as a welder in a Yokohama shipyard after finishing junior high school. “Lots of shipbuilders had tattoos,” he recalls as he pulls on a pair of latex gloves. Nakano saw his first tattoo at age 11 at a public bathhouse. “It was a culture shock, but I thought it looked pretty cool.” At 16, he began tattooing himself. This was a time when information about tattoos was still scarce and techniques were only passed down from master to apprentice. “It was all guesswork,” he says. “I tattooed my leg using needles fastened to disposable chopsticks.”
At age 25, Nakano finally secured an apprenticeship with Yoshitsugu Muramatsu (aka Horiyoshi I), a well-known tattooist in Yokohama. Nakano showed up at Muramatsu’s studio unannounced after his letters had gone unanswered. “Of course, I was nervous,” he says. “There wasn’t a sign outside the studio like there are on my shops today.” It wasn’t a place you could just pop in for a chat. “It was completely underground,” he says, recalling how the studio had the “strong scent of the outlaw.” Unlike today, the majority of the clients were yakuza. Horiyoshi I, who had already named his own son Horiyoshi II, gave Nakano the “Horiyoshi” name as well. In 1979, after a lengthy apprenticeship, Horiyoshi III was born.
The tattoo machine fires up, its buzzing echoing through the studio. Horiyoshi III puts Vaseline on the customer’s back. “I used to think I’d rather quit tattooing than use a machine,” he says, as he begins shading in the Buddhist hell. Horiyoshi III also practices tebori, often called the “hand-poked method” in English. For centuries, tattooing in Japan was synonymous with tebori, while the stereotype was that the tattoo machine was for foreigners. For Horiyoshi III, that would change in 1985, when he attended a tattoo convention in Rome and saw firsthand how efficient, versatile, and easy to use the machine was. He attended with his friend American tattooist Ed Hardy, who not only used the machine, but was also better versed in irezumi than Horiyoshi III. Japanese tattooing wasn’t simply a method of inserting ink, but rather, an entire history and catalogue of iconography.
Master tattooer Horiyoshi III in his Yokohama studio.
After the Rome convention, realizing there were those outside Japan who knew more about his country than he did, Horiyoshi III arrived back in Japan with a new-found thirst for Japanese art, history, and culture. It wasn’t simply a matter of pride. It was the beginning of a lifelong pursuit of knowledge. “Mankind has made it this far by studying,” he says. “The tattoo machine, for example, was the result of someone studying.”
Horiyoshi III began spending his days in libraries and bookstores. “I had this small camera that I’d use to snap photos if there was a book with only one page I wanted,” he recalls. “The shopkeepers would get pissed at me.” He did buy countless books, and filled his home and studio with them. “When you have lots of knowledge, you get wisdom,” he says. “When you have lots of wisdom, you get an endless flow of original ideas.” The impact is clearly evident in his art.
“Personally, I don’t like the word ‘art,’” Horiyoshi III says. Admirers of his work, however, would be quick to call it just that. “You shouldn’t call what you do art—but I won’t stop others from using the term,” he adds. It’s not simply that the work should speak for itself, but also that Horiyoshi III respects the tradition of the shokunin—the craftsman. “I
