- [taki] i think i'vealways been creative. i've always liked drawing. i've liked creating things. you know, i've been tattooednow more years than i haven't. i've been tattooingfor almost two decades. i think it's wonderfulthat people all over the world can relate to this art form. - [luke] i do feel a personal connection to the art that i create.
the essence of them is powerful. i want my tattoos to readfrom across the room. i don't want you to have to get right up on it to know what it is. - i would say i've had a lifelong obsession with japanese tattooing. when i was a child i saw japanese tattoo's in japanese television programs and i was just instantly enamored with it.
and then from there devoting my life to the study and the executionof the japanese tattoo. - one my mentors who taught me to tattoo did mostly japanese and that's my first exposure to the style. i was a professional mmafighter for five years. that work ethic has transferredover into tattooing. i feel like i alwaysshould be working harder. - [taki] horitomo is a master
tattooist of the japanese form. i think horitomo isone of the most amazing tattooers of our generation. - he's incredible. his ability in painting and tattooing and the volume of work, the stuff he's doing is just mind blowing. - japanese tattoos tellall the stories of japan. you have anything from like tales of
historical samurai, folklore, legends, religion. really it's just a conduitfor japanese culture. - every little piece ofjapanese tattooing has meaning. you see a samurai lookingboy holding a peach, there's a reason, it's not just thrown in there. - one of my favorite stories is tomomori. he was a warrior wholost a battle on a ship. his entire army was drowned in the battle and then in defeat he wrapped himself
around an anchor, drowned himself. there's a crab called the heiki crab. and the crab have a face on it that looks just like a kabuki samurai face. there's a lot of prints from 18th, 19th century of tomomori wrapped around an anchor with these crab and the japanese peoplewill not eat these crab cause they believe they're the spirits
of the fallen warriors of tomomori. that's what's so cool about japanese as you start to understand the stories. and i try to bring that into my tattooing. - it's thought tattooingexisted as early as 10,000 bc. the first written accounts by the chinese when they visited japan, they called it the land of law, was that everyone was tattooed on their faces
and arms according to rank. the reason there's such a stigma with japanese tattooing is that at some point in history the japanese government has used tattoos to mark criminals. obviously this barbaric use of tattooing immediatelyassociated with criminality. there's also speculation that people used larger tattoos to cover those tattoos
so they could hide the fact that they'd been arrested before. in japan today, many people associate japanese tattooing withthe japanese mafia. a lot of this is reinforcedby japanese cinema. - you know, there's certainplaces you can't go into. you can't go into a gymif you have tattoos. you can't go into certain bathhouses if you have tattoos. so that's still a real thing.
- the body suit is a very striking and i think one of the most recognizable aspects of the japanese tattoo. knowing how long that takes and knowing how much dedication you really respect that person and what they've committed to and how much pain they've endured. they've certainly earned the tattoo. - [luke] the goal ofanyone doing japanese is
you want to be doingbody suits, back pieces. if you can do a wholebody suit start to finish, it's really how japanese tattooing was meant to be, was one client, one tattooer. - i think there's a strong significance and a cultural connectionbetween the usage of colors in japanesetattoos and japanese culture. just because you're supposed to be more reserved in some ways the japanese
want to keep some things muted and not so obvious and not so in your face. - the pallet's pretty simplein japanese tattooing. you have bold reds, greens, golds, browns. it's not too complex. heavy in black. the background is the biggestthing that sets it aside. with an artist like horitomowho practices tebori, the hand tattooing, thattechnique is very important.
the way he shades with that, you have a stick, you have someneedles lashed to it. and you use one hand as your fulcrum point to stretch the skinand then the other hand would push the needle in. - the look you get from tebori you cannot match it with a machine. it's just much more saturated. the colors are more vibrant.
it's not going anywhere. - i grew up looking at japanese books and you'd see these tattoo parties where they'd have their shirtsoff and eating food and just enjoying each others company and enjoying tattoo art. i started having theseramen tattoo parties, one i wanted to showmy gratitude to clients that had gotten large amounts of work
from me, body suits, back pieces. these are the people have allowed me to express myself and have this life. you might joke that maybe hot soup is not the best thing to eat while shirtless, but when you're with a group of people with a lot of tattoos you all know exactly what each others had been through. and then you can sit there andadmire each others tattoos.
and it just shows toohow japanese tattooing just sort of blends seamlessly with life. - [luke] as i've evolved over the years i think my stuff has even scaled back. i'm trying to do less tricksand just make things simple. make things nice and readable. and make them so they're gonnalast, make them so they're gonna look great in 50 years. - i think japanese tattooinghas changed very rapidly.
a lot more work has been published. a lot of tattooers have traveled. we also see very good japanese tattooing being done by non japanese nationals. what we see now are people of all cultures of all ethnicities that are devoting their lives to the study of this. there are some people that sort of bemoan the loss of when japanese tattooing was
a little more hidden, wasa littler harder to get to. but i welcome the information age. that way we can properly document this for history's sake and share itwith the next generation.
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