Japanese Rose Tattoo

Japanese Tattoo Art Dragon

Japanese Tattoo Art Dragon

Japanese tattoo designs

Japanese tattoo designs

Japanese Bird and Flower Tattoo Design on Back Girl

Japanese Bird And Flower Tattoo

Skull and Snake japanese tattoo

Skull and Snake japanese tattoo

japanese tattoo gallery

japanese tattoo gallery

Japanese tattoo design

Japanese tattoo design

Chinese Tattoo Tips

I just saw a Caucasian woman with a Chinese tattoo that says, ‘love birds’ in Chinese. But that’s what she thinks. When read in the Chinese context, it means either you love birds or and you are a bird lover! On the naughty side, it can also mean you love the male organ, you know, the reproductive one. If you don’t believe me, trying showing it to anyone in China or Taiwan.
So it is really crucial for Westerners who want to tattoo Chinese characters on their body to really know what it means and symbolize. The Chinese calligraphy may look impressive, especially when combined with a Chinese dragon tattoo, but get it wrong and you may be looking like a clown with a puzzle tattoo instead. And by the way, Chinese tattoos are not Japanese tattoos. Some characters may be the same, but most of them have different meanings in the different cultural context.
For those thinking of inking the Chinese characters tattoos, I would suggest consulting a Chinese speaking tattoo artist before the procedure. Unless you want to look like a victim of a practical joke, it’s better to get it right the first time because tattoos are permanent and removal can be painful. Chinese tattoos with just the characters or writing alone can look quite boring unless the calligraphy is done tastefully, which is rare unless the tattoo artist is trained to write and have practiced Chinese calligraphy for a period of time.
I would suggest combining it with Chinese symbols to give a better impact. The Chinese phoenix tattoo is a very powerful symbol for women and the Chinese dragon is a good one for men. Both are mystical creatures from Heaven and symbolize power and luck. If you are more ambitious, you can put all the twelve Zodiac tattoo signs on your back. But you better be tall for this project.

Japanese Tattoo On The Full Back Body Picture Gallery

At the beginning of the Meiji period the Japanese government, wanting to protect its image and make a good impression on the West, outlawed tattoos, and irezumi took on connotations of criminality. Nevertheless, fascinated foreigners went to Japan seeking the skills of tattoo artists, and traditional tattooing continued underground.

Tattooing was legalized by the occupation forces in 1945, but has retained its image of criminality. For many years, traditional Japanese tattoos were associated with the yakuza, Japan's notorious mafia, and many businesses in Japan (such as public baths, fitness centers and hot springs) still ban customers with tattoos.

Tattooing and other forms of body decoration and body modification, as in much of the western world, are gaining in popularity in Japan. However, Japanese young people who choose to get tattooed are most often choosing "one point" designs -- small designs that can be completed in one sitting -- usually in the American or tribal styles. More recently, however sanskrit Siddham script tattoos are becoming more and more fashionable.

Traditional irezumi is still done by specialist tattooists, but it is painful, time-consuming and expensive: a typical traditional body suit (covering the arms, back, upper legs and chest, but leaving an untattooed space down the center of the body) can take one to five years of weekly visits to complete and cost in excess of US$30,000.

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

Nice Japanese Tattoos With Image Japanese Tattoo Designs For Male Tattoo With Japanese

A Brief History

The traditional Japanese tattoos known as 'horimono' became very popular among the people of the 18th century or the Edo period. The most popular choices for the designs of the tattoos were the images from traditional water color paintings, picture books and woodcuts. Understanding the history and background is as important to experience and enjoy the Japanese horimono tattoos as it is to preserve their traditions. The Edo period was like a period of Cultural Revolution for the Japanese. There were many changes that happened during that period at different levels of the society. A different class of people grew up out of the ordinary people of Japan, who found lot of interests in fashion, comedy, drama, novels, songs, and theatre. So, a unique and separate culture began to grow up.

As the society of Edo progressed, the ordinary people began to take pride in activities of fashion. Gradually, the Edo working class people began to imitate the heroes from the folk stories they used to read in the books (especially the picture books) and comics and other artworks as popularized by the famous woodblock artist Kuniyoshi. Getting highly impressed from these artistic works, the people began to tattoo themselves ritualistically and painfully with the designs based on folklore, such as dragons, Chinese lions, and giant snakes, and also with religious figures with the help of sharp needles for inserting pressed charcoal ink under their skin.


The people who carried out the process of tattooing were mostly the woodblock artists who simply had to exchange their wood-carving blades for long and sharp needles. With time, some of these people became so much involved with tattooing that common people began to accept them as tattoo specialists. This is how the unique Japanese traditional body art form, horimono was formed.

Today, it is very common to have tattoo conventions in Japan as well as in the West. But to have such conventions in the Edo period in Japan around 150 years earlier is itself a strong indicator of the Japanese having a long and rich history of tattoo culture. Even though there are no photographic record of their works and designs, lot of books are available today which describe the life and work of many tattoo artists of the Japanese Edo period.


One very famous tattooist from the Edo period is Horiuno. Horiuno was born in 1843. He became a tattooist at the age of 20. But before beginning to work full time from his age of 40, he travelled extensively throughout Japan, going from place to place like Osaka, Kyoto and Shizuoka. However, he continued doing his business well into his seventies and much of his work can be seen even today. Most of his customers used to work in the local construction and manufacturing industries, and in 1912, some of these people of the Kanda area formed the Kanda Choyu-kai, meaning "Tattoo Friends Society of Kanda", and after another 10 years, the society was extended to outside the Kanda area, and formed the Edo Choyu-kai.


All the members of this group, who are mostly labourers such as construction workers, carpenters and plasterers, meet every year at places like Ojinanushi-no-taki and Marukotamagawaen, take part in mass outdoor banquets, or in festivals such as the Asakusa Sanja-matsuri, and present their intricate and extensive body art tattoos with pride. Horiuno was known as the most talented tattooist from Japan and was famous throughout Japan and also overseas. However, at that time there were many other equally skilful tattooists in Japan, such as Horikane, Kyuta, Horiiwa, and Nekokichi.


If you have grown tired of your tattoo and want to have it removed there are a number of options available, home and DIY methods have worked for people but the highest success rate comes with surgical methods. To remove a tattoo with excision can be costly but it's far less painful with a greater success rate. Take a look at the effect of tattoo excision

Koreans use tattoos to escape draft

Koreans have a curse — "You should be tattooed!" — that reflects the ancient practice of using tattoos to brand thieves and slaves.

Koreans tattoos

But a nationwide police search launched this month for men with tattoos has rounded up a new breed of criminals — young men who use the body art to try to evade the country's mandatory military service, crucial to its defense against North Korea.

About 170 men have been arrested for "willfully tampering with their bodies to avoid military duty" — a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. National media showed the disgraced young men, handcuffed, heads bowed and shirts removed to reveal large tattoos of dragons, scaled fish, birds and roses.

Although there is no law against tattoos, South Koreans consider them symbols of disgrace, often associated with gangsters. Likewise in Japan, tattoos carry a stigma for their association with the "yakuza" gangsters who cover their bodies with them.

South Korea (news - web sites)'s conscription law rules men with large tattoos unfit for the military because they cause "abomination among fellow soldiers."

Before they reach 30, able-bodied men must serve for at least 26 months in South Korea's 650,000-member military, which faces the North's 1.1 million troops across a heavily guarded border.

Most see military service as a sacred duty of manhood. By law, those seeking top government jobs or running for parliament must reveal not only their own service records but those of their children.

n until you finish your military duty," says Chang Myong-ki, 40. "If you don't behave in a manly manner, they might ask you, 'Have you been to the military yet?'"

But some complain of having to interrupt careers and schooling to serve. Disenchantment has grown after repeated scandals showed many of the country's rich and powerful pay bribes or help their sons get U.S. citizenship to keep them out of the military.

Authorities regularly hunt for draft-dodgers. To win exemptions, some turn to overeating or fasting. Some have doctored X-rays or had surgery to damage ligaments or knee cartilage. A few have even feigned insanity.

With old perceptions fading fast, tattoos are increasingly popular among young South Koreans. Hundreds of tattoo artists operate illegally — without medical degrees, as required by law — soliciting customers through the Internet, and offering a new loophole for young men seeking a way out of the draft.

"There is a need to warn those who would do anything to avoid military service," Judge Kim Sung-keun said this month as he sentenced a 24-year-old father of two young children to eight months in prison for using tattoos to avoid conscription.

Authorities base their arrests in some cases on a suspect's history of military physicals. If a young man goes through one exam without overly large tattoos, but comes back for another round with an outsized dragon and secures an exemption, he would be under suspicion.

Investigators also have questioned tattoo artists about their customers' motives.

In the early 1980s, the country's military junta launched a crackdown on political dissidents and organized crime under its "campaign for social purification." Many with tattoos were sent to military-run camps, regardless of their criminal history.

"I am afraid that the draft-dodgers are bringing back the bad image to tattoos," said an operator of a Web site for tattoo-lovers, who gave only his last name Song.

In ancient times, Korean fishermen turned to full-body tattoos believing they brought protection from sea beasts and shipwreck. In old Korea, authorities tattooed "Thief" or "Stealer of Government Money" on the foreheads of criminals. Slaves wore tattoos on their forearms showing who owned them.

Confucianism, the centuries-old primer on social behavior, urged Koreans to "preserve the body, hair and skin inherited from ancestors."

Today, however, plastic surgery, hair dyeing and piercing are booming industries.

When soccer star Ahn Jung-hwan scored his winning goal against Japan earlier this month, he threw off his shirt and flashed tattoos on both shoulders.

"In the following days, I had 10 times more people visiting my Web site," said Kang Ho, a Seoul tattoo artist who calls South Korea's regulations on tattoos "out of date" and "ridiculous."