Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/463

Rh patterns." But from the dawn of regular history far down into the Middle Ages, tattooing seems to have been confined to criminals. It was used as branding was formerly used in Europe, whence probably the contempt still felt for tattooing by the Japanese upper classes. From condemned desperadoes to bravoes at large is but a step. The swashbucklers of feudal times took to tattooing, apparently because some blood and thunder scene of adventure, engraven on their chest and limbs, helped to give them a terrific air when stripped for any reason of their clothes. Other classes whose avocations led them to baring their bodies in. public followed suit,—the carpenters, for instance, and running grooms (bettō); and the tradition remained of ornamenting almost the entire body and limbs with a hunting, theatrical, or other showy scene. A poor artisan might end by spending as much as a hundred dollars on having himself completely decorated in this manner. Of course he could not afford to pay such a sum down at once; so he was operated on by degrees through a term of years, as money was forthcoming.

Soon after the revolution of 1868, a dire catastrophe occurred:—the Government made tattooing a penal offence! Some official, it would seem, had got hold of the idea that tattooing was a barbarous practice which would render Japan contemptible in the eyes of Europe; and so tattooing, like cremation, was summarily interdicted. Europe herself then came to the rescue, in the shape of two young English princes who visited Japan in 1881, and who, learning that globe-trotters had sometimes managed surreptitiously to engage a tattooer's services, did the like with excellent effect, Prince George (now Prince of Wales) being appropriately decorated on the arm with a dragon. From that time forward, no serious effort has been made to interfere with the tattooer's art, and in the hands of such men as Hori Chiyo and Hori Yasu it has become an art indeed,—an art