The History of Tattooing
Asia
Borneo - India - Indonesia - Japan - Taiwan - Thailand

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Japan - The Ainos

The classic Japanese tattoo, is a full body suit. Most often done from some of the woodcut designs from the 1800's, and made as one whole design. Always in bright colours.

In earlier days, of course they did not use an electrical tattoo machine. The needles were attached to the end of a stick, which was held across one thumb, and worked almost like when you are playing billiards. 

The Japanese tattoos were the basis of most of the classic European and American "sailor tattoos" from the beginning of 1900s.

Photo by Richard Todd from the book: Marks of Civilization - Arnold Rubin (ed). UCLA 1988

In Japan a totally different tradition was living among the Ainos, who were the original Japanese.