Ukiyo and Tebori
Tattooing in the floating world.
I.
Ukiyo 浮世 is often translated as “floating world”. What is a floating world? Even in English, the phrase evokes multiple meanings. A dream, a heavenly place, an illusory condition, a state of intoxication, an attitude of detachment, the spiritual veil of conditional existence (or māya), the truth of impermanence, the understanding of how the passing of time bestows value upon the present. Ukiyo is the fleeting nature of existence and the flourishing culture of Edo-period Japan. Ukiyo is a worldview that engenders a way of being, culturally expressed and collectively known.
The word ukiyo holds within it a dual sensitivity––the inevitability of death and the value of living in the present moment. The practice of tattooing has an ancient history in Japan, roughly originating during the Jomon or Paleolithic eras around 10,000 BCE. The indigenous people of northern Japan, known as Ainu, are known for the tattooing tradition. However, it was not until the Edo period that Japanese tattooing developed the artistic forms that characterize it today.
Japanese tattoos evolved in the context of the defining artistic genre of the Edo period, known as ukiyo-e 浮世絵, commonly translated as “pictures of the floating world”. Woodblock prints became the characteristic medium of ukiyo-e art. In fact, both woodblock carvers and tattoo artists were known by the title horishi 彫り師––hori comes from the verb horu, meaning “to carve”. The process of making woodblock prints requires a knife and other tools to carve the artistic design onto the surface of a wooden block––an obvious analog to the “carving” of tattoo designs into the surface of the skin. The process of carving tattoos into the skin is known as tebori 手彫り, meaning “to carve by hand”. This hand-carving was accomplished with a hand-made bamboo tool, slender in shape, with a group of needles fashioned to the end. Held in the hand of the horishi, this tool is carefully articulated in angle in an audible rhythm reminiscent of analog clocks. The process requires nothing short of mastery to execute and experientially transmits a time and place, seemingly passed, but mysteriously present.
II.
Tattoos are a meditation on permanence and impermanence. The embedding of ink into the skin is permanent while the living canvas of the body is itself impermanent. A tattoo is permanent in the sense of lasting a lifetime, but as art, it bears a much shorter lifespan than works made upon non-living mediums. Today, we can view the original works of artists from centuries past. Perhaps these great works of art have achieved the timeless. Yet, despite their endurance, a work of art remains inherently fragile. A special effort is required to protect and preserve something of value. Even “permanent” tattoos can fade from exposure to sunlight over time and certainly do not last beyond the lifespan of the individual.[1] This makes each tattooed person the unique bearer of an art-form, for as long as they live.
What may be so captivating about tattoo art is its subjectivity and ability to reflect change. Not everyone is an artist, and even those drawn to deep appreciation of art, often find themselves forever objective to the subject they so admire. When viewed through the lens of separation, art becomes unattainable, and its value limited to awe and wonder. The great works of art and the profundity they engender in the viewer is the evidence of a different process: a subjective process in which the viewer participates in the art, is engulfed within the art, is encompassed within its affect.
Tattooing takes the subjective process to its visceral and even violent depths. Tattoing takes the artistic process to its subjective and visceral depths. With tattoo, the purveyor of art is not viewing the art but becoming the art. Tattooing is a process, not an endpoint. Tattooing is a metaphor for life, with its temporary trials and lasting victories. We could hang a beautiful painting in our home. We could also wear a shirt featuring our favorite artwork. But it is another form of artistic appreciation and participation to wear art on the canvas of the skin, permanently! It is far from the ease of pleasantry that objective admiration so readily attains and is instead intimate with the depths of transformation that true art initiates.
There is no easy way to realize tattoo art. It requires enduring pain, healing wounds, the shocks of permanent body modification, and the joys of freshly inked art settled in the skin. Tattoos challenge us to become comfortable in our own skin, first and foremost. Tattoos call us to be who we are without regret, without shame, and even without a word. Tattoos make visible the invisible, teaching us the power in expression. Thus, tattoos were given spiritual value in indigenous cultures and worn in these contexts as empowered talismans.When our life-force is strengthened and rooted in the body, then it no longer wanders and becomes vulnerable to negative influences (within and without). Tattooing is certainly not the only way to realize these virtues and not everyone who is getting tattooed relates to it this way, but it is in my view, the highest and deepest purpose of tattoos and even all art.[2]
For those who choose to wear a full bodysuit of tattoos in the traditional Japanese style, there are large portions of the tattoo (backpiece for example) that are not even visible to the wearer. I have heard people ask, why are you getting tattooed where you will not be able to see it? It is a good question, but a proper answer requires an exploration of the meaning and purpose of tattooing. People do not wear tattoos to view them like a piece of art on a wall. Tattooing has subjective meaning, it is a process even more than it is a finished thing. Wearing art is empowering, even if you cannot see it all the time. You can feel it and it is fused with you, both through the process of receiving it and through its permanence in the skin. Tattoos become a part of you and you become part of the tattoo. The skin is our largest “organ” and the means by which we receive the world and protect ourselves against its pathogenic influences. Tattoos transform the barrier, the interface of our participation in existence.
Ultimately, tattooing is difficult to explain to the non-tattooed. Tattoos are a form of transcendental realism––an invocation of Truth, Reality, and Beauty. There are those of us who feel an inexplicable attraction to getting inked, an ambition that even becomes an urge. This desire is just as paradoxical as tattoos themselves. Yet, the fleeting pain of tattoos transform into a lasting pleasure. Their relative permanence fades into absolute impermanence, while the world floats above the clouds. Truly, the paradoxes of tattoos are only adequately answered under the penetrating gaze of the needle itself.
Notes
[1] Exceptions to this include photographic and physical records. See the extensive photographic portfolio of Takagi Akimitsu in The Tattoo Writer by Pascal Bagot. Physical records exist in the preservation of tattooed skin, post-mortem. These “pelts” have been collected in museums. In the early-to-mid 20th century, Dr. Fukushi Masaichi amassed a collection of such pelts, preserving them carefully, in a private collection. A public collection can be found in the Bunshin Tattoo Museum, founded by tattoo master Horiyoshi III in Yokohama, Japan.
[2] A present-day enactment of this principle is seen in the Edo Choyukai Group. Established in the last century, the Edo Choyukai is a group united by traditional Japanese tattoos, and who embark on a sacred pilgrimage once a year in honor of this.