Apr 25, 2022 (Japan Times) - Around 1.4 million Japanese adults have tattoos, almost double the number from 2014, according to Yoshimi Yamamoto, a cultural anthropologist at Tsuru University who studies traditional hajichi tattoos worn on the hands of Okinawan women.
In 2020, tattooing took a huge leap toward broader acceptance when Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that it could be performed by people other than licensed medical professionals. Sixty percent of people in their 20s and younger believe that general rules regarding tattoos should be relaxed, according to a survey conducted last year by an information technology company.
In big cities like Tokyo and Osaka, visible tattoos are becoming more commonplace among food service workers, retail employees and those in the fashion industry.
Tattoos have a long history in Japan, and they were important to women in Indigenous Okinawan and Ainu communities. Their association with organized crime goes back about 400 years. They were used to brand criminals on their arms or foreheads with marks that varied by region and crime: for instance, a circle, a large X or the Chinese character for dog.
After Japan ended more than two centuries of isolation in 1868, the country started promoting Western-style modernization policies. Among them: a law banning tattoos, which were seen as “barbaric.”
Although that ban was lifted in 1948, the stigma remained. Yakuza, or Japanese gangsters, often have neck-to-ankle wabori, a traditional Japanese-style tattoo done by hand using needles. Because of this gangster association, many hot springs resorts, beaches and gyms bar people with tattoos. Office jobs that allow tattoos are still sparse to nonexistent, with many companies expressly prohibiting applicants who have them.
Tattoos are also frowned upon as a violation of communal codes for how Japanese people should look — codes that can carry severe penalties for anyone who deviates from them. ...continue reading
