Japanese Tattoo Designs: December 2010

Japanese Tattoo Art

Getting a good tattoo that will be enjoyed for years to come is much harder than most people expect. After all, this is akin to a permanent wardrobe choice. If you had one shirt that you had to wear every day for the rest of your life, you would likely put careful thought into exactly what qualities that shirt would need to have. Yet when it comes to picking out a tattoo, many people just drop in on their local parlor, thumb through a few books, and say "That one."

This is a huge mistake. Here are several common problems encountered using this approach:

1) Trendy, current tattoos are frequently chosen. These will look great for the next few years, but will look outdated when the next tattoo trend hits. I write from experience on this one.

2) You are limited to seeing only one or a few styles of work, i.e. the styles represented by just the artists in the parlor.

3) There is often pressure in a parlor to quickly pick out a tattoo. While the artist themselves don't pressure patrons, there is an intrinsic motivation to not take up time and space that could be better spent on another paying customer.

The end result of any bad decision is a tattoo that doesn't fit your style, a tattoo that quickly fades from fashion, or to put it bluntly: a tattoo that sucks. When that happens, the cleanest option is a cover-up, but the original tattoo paints you into a design corner.

Traditional Tattoos Japanese Design

female Tribal Tattoo Design

Tribal Tattoo Design

For hundreds and hundreds of years, cultures across the globe have used special tribal tattoo designs for individual decoration and communal identification. In recent years, the use of tribal designs by modern skin artists has grown exponentially to meet the demand from people of all ages seeking tattoos of this very nature.

Historically, traditional tribal tattoos have been utilized by cultures all over the world for everything from signifying rites of passage and defining social status to augmenting personal beauty and identifying persons of importance. And in fact, the designs of tribal tattoos vary as greatly as the cultures from which they come.

Some tribal art has been traced back to as early as 2000 B.C., and it continues to be used for cultural and social purposes today. Nearly every continent has contributed some form of recognizable tribal tattoo art to the modern-day repertoire.

Tribal tattoo artists may draw from elements originally created by the ancient Egyptians, the North American Indians, West African tribal elders, and many, many more. Although most tattoo seekers today request tribal tattoos based on their visual appeal rather than their social affiliation, the significance of such art cannot be underrated.

While the art of Japanese tattooing, or irezumi, is said have continued for a hundred centuries, the introduction of the Buddhist faith to Japan discouraged its widespread use. The Chinese, who brought Buddhism to Japan, abhorred the art of tattooing, and their influence made its way to the upper classes of Japan.

From the early seventeenth to late nineteenth centuries, during Japan's Edo Period, Japanese tattoos were most often seen on Japanese prostitutes, who used them to entice customers; Japanese firemen were known for their remarkable horimono, or full body tattoos which were quite unlike any other tattoos in the world. The firefighters regarded their tattoos as signs of brotherhood and masculinity.

The other class of Japanese regularly tattooed during this period were criminals who for one hundred and fifty years were marked either with a tattooed ring, or tattooed character on the forehead, on the arm for each crime they may have resented being permanently marked, but prior to the introduction of tattooing, the usually means of identifying criminals was to amputate their noses or ears.

Japanese tattoos regained their popularity when a woodblock printed Chinese novel, "Suikoden," illustrated with warriors bearing horimono of tigers, dragons, and flowers. The book was wildly successful with Japan's lower classes, who began demanding similar tattoos.

But the only tattoo artists available were thewoodblock printers themselves. Because the printers had no tools except the gouges and chisels with which they created their woodblocks, they used them and their special black ink which will change its color to a bluish green when it reacts with human skin.

All authentic Japanese tattoos are still applied by hand with "tebori", groups of handmade needles attached to wooden or metal handles; it takes a great deal of practice to master the art of tattooing by hand.

Having a "suit" of Japanese tattoos applied with tebori, as everyone who was tattooed in the mid-1800s did, was a time-intensive experience; an entire tattoo could take up to five years of weekly sessions to finish. As tebori are more likely to cause bruising than the tattoo machines widely used today, they were in many cases very painful years.

Japanese tattoos are rich in symbolism; one of the most popular is the koi fish, or carp, which can outlive many humans and represent endurance and wisdom. Dragons bring luck, and are often depicted with clouds or rivers and lakes, so necessary for the rice crops which have sustained the Japanese for thousands of years.