Japanese Full Body Tattoos
Body art has been a part of our history for well over two thousand years! Body art doesn’t constitute just tribal face painting, but it also includes the more complex process of permanent tattooing. Although tattoos were initially a vital part of a culture’s social and religious rites, they slowly took a back seat as time passed.
As Civilizations advanced, tattoos came to be used more for permanently making an individual (like outlaws and traitors) which was a manner of disgracing them in public. And thus tattoos slowly became associated with criminal behaviour and immoral living. Incidentally, Japan is one of the last countries to actually abolish the practice of disciplinary tattooing.
It is said that this tattooed clique later resorted to full body tattooing in an effort to hide their indignity. As a result, tattoo artists derived a wide range of attractive designs for the whole body. Over a period of time, these full body tattoos began attracting public attention and especially during the Tokugawa period.
The Tokugawa period (dated between 1603 and 1868) witnessed some of the strictest sumptuary laws and the people resorted to full body tattoos as a sign of rebellion. Even though the practice was severely condemned by the Japanese authorities, it continued to rise in popularity! Public display of one’s tattoos in Japan is prohibited by law even today.
The practice of full body tattooing in Japan is most commonly associated with the Yakuza – the Japanese mafia. The Yakuza is said to have formed as a result of the dissolution that the once greatly regulated society experienced. The practice is also said to have many influences – from the Samurai, the Bushido, the sinister side of the Tokugawa regime and even gambling! The higher classes of Japanese society, even today, consider the practice as a barbaric tradition.
For these reasons and many more (not to mention they cost a bomb and aren’t particularly pain free!) the practice is again on a downward spiral. The number of people learning the art has also sharply declined. By the looks of it, this spectacular body art will soon be an extinct art form.
*The number of people learning the art has also sharply declined. By the looks of it, this spectacular body art will soon be an extinct art form.*
You must be joking. Every ink shop on the coast is booked for months and months in advance. Has been for a good two years now. Even the non-elite groups that call themselves tattoo artists (Backyard tattooists) are having a ball getting work from constant walk-ins. Rolling in the big bucks, producing some great and terrible work. As someone who loves every form of art and regards tattoos as something not only deeply meaningful, beautiful but a very powerful form of art, I will cling to the hope and thought that this passage is very much wrong.
Art is Science made clear
I agree that the number of people just doing ordinary tattoos are so many it is incredible – and awesome. But I think the line you are referring to was meant to refer to a specific type of old-style Japanese tattoo. It is good to know that tattoo is so accepted now though,and I do agree – it is a very powerful form of art and deeply personal as well.
Thanks for your comments.