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Bushido : Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo
by Takahiro Kitamura, Katie M. Kitamura
Book Description
This gorgeous book delves into the elusive world of traditional Japanese tattooing. The Samurai spirit, Bushido, is an integral component of Japanese tattooing that is traced through the imagery and interpersonal dynamics of this veiled subculture. The eloquent text is based largely on Takahiro Kitamuras experiences as client and student of the famed Japanese tattoo master, Horiyoshi III. Over 200 beautiful photos by Jai Tanju capture the breathtaking tattoo artistry of Horiyoshi III. Five original, unpublished prints by Horiyoshi III, like those in his acclaimed book, 100 Demons of Horiyoshi III, are included here. Bushido: Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo is certain to fascinate everyone with an interest in tattoo culture.
About the Author
Takahiro Kitamura, who tattoos as Horitaka, currently resides and works in California. Katie Kitamura is pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of London. Jai Tanju is a photographer in San Jose, California.
The Japanese Tattoo
by Sandi Fellman, D. M. Thomas (Designer)
Book Fourth Cover
In the fall of 1982, Sandi Fellman, a young American photographer
visiting Japan, began the series of colour portraits in this striking volume. Her subjects were the Irezumi, a secretive group of people drawn from the underworld of Tokyo and Osaka. To meet these men and women who had chosen to have themselves transformed through tattooing into living works of art was difficult, to gain their trust and to persuade them to bare themselves for an American woman and huge Polaroid camera was an essay in cultural contradiction. But Sandi Fellman's unstinting effort has produced an extraordinary collection of photographs, which at once document a cultural phenomenon virtually unknown in the West (and in Japan as well) and reveal a tradition of artistry and dedication that knows no national boundaries.
We enter through Ms Fellman's large-format Polaroid prints into a strange and even frightening world where members of the Yakuza, the
Japanese equivalent of the Mafia, spend hundreds of thousands of yen and hundreds of hours of pain and torment being tattooed. The range of the tattoo images is varied, examples reproduced here are drawn from Japanese mythology, Kabuki
theatre, and extend to the lexicon of the comic book and biker symbology. The works are executed by well-trained artists, men who have served an exacting apprenticeship with an acknowledged master, and who will eventually inherit his clientele and his working name. Fellman notes in her text the ways in
which the tattooer plays " with combinations of belief, fact and fiction, transferring fleeting prayers into mortal permanence, disfiguring so as to adorn, and drawing equally from beauty anf the grotesque ".
Tattoos of the Floating World:
Ukiyo-E Motifs in Japanese Tattoo
by Takahiro Kitamura, Katie M. Kitamura
Book Description
This unique book by tattoo artist Takahiro Kitamura (Horitaka, a pupil of Horiyoshi III) discusses the art of the Japanese tattoo in the context of Ukiyo-e, concentrating on the parallel histories of the woodblock print and the tattoo. Through high quality illustrations it shows that the Japanese tattoo is highly reliant on and linked to the woodblock print and that it deserves a position among the other art forms. A range of typical ukiyo-e motifs in the Japanese tattoo are discussed and illustrated by the original Japanese prints, and sketches, drawings and tattoos by tattoo master Horiyoshi III. The book ends with a special essay by Don Ed Hardy.
