(Thread) Japanese tattooing, or irezumi (入れ墨), is said to have originated in the Jomon Period (10,000 BCE-300 CE).
Below, one of the 105 full-bodied tattoo skins that have been donated to the Medical Pathology Museum at Tokyo University upon the death of their owners.
Below, one of the 105 full-bodied tattoo skins that have been donated to the Medical Pathology Museum at Tokyo University upon the death of their owners.
The museum's collection was put together by Fukushi Masaichi, a Japanese pathologist who even offered to pay for and finish the tattoos for the owners if they agreed to donate their skins upon death.
The photos below were taken in the 1850s-70s, and were all originally hand-tinted (not colorized).
"The tattoos were used as protection symbols or ornamental designs that varied among tribes and induvial according to rank. Other historical texts point to the importance of tattoos to samurai in the sixteenth century as forms of identification."
Source: Inked and Exiled: A History of Tattooing in Japan.
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