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Trippin
A History of Tattooing in Japan
2022
The Task
Long-form authored feature for Trippin tracing the cultural and legal history of tattooing in Japan. A study of how tattooing moved across millennia from Ainu spiritual practice through Edo-period criminal branding, Yakuza appropriation, Meiji-era erasure, and into the contemporary legal grey area Japan still occupies.
The Outcome
Built the piece across three structural arcs: the deep history (Jōmon-era origins, Ainu ritual practice, the Edo-period shift to criminal branding by region), the technical and aesthetic tradition (Irezumi, Tebori, the Horishi artists, ukiyo-e influence on motifs), and the modern reality (the 2020 Supreme Court ruling, the 56% of Japanese establishments still refusing tattooed visitors per the Japan Tourism Agency, the ongoing Yakuza association). Visual research surfaced four photographers' work on Japanese tattoo culture (Michael Magers, Horace Bristol, Ronin de Goede, and Chloé Jafé), whose series I Give You My Life documenting Yakuza women anchored the piece's strongest visual chapter. The feature read tattooing as a discipline shaped by 1,000 years of cultural politics.
Editorial WritingCultural CommentaryVisual Research