A tattooed man

Category

Library Item

Item no

15117

Title

A tattooed man

Description

A man leans against painted white boards with his back to the camera. He is wearing a loincloth and his hair is worn in the 'chonmage' style (shaven on top and with a topknot at the back). He has a large tattoo on his back coloured with blue and red ink. The image represents a man wearing clothes with complicated geometrical designs and holding a short sword ('wakizashi'). A careful observation of the picture shows that the original tattoo, barely visible under the colour, had a slightly different pattern.
The lines on the wooden boards have been underlined with ink and the background is completely neutral. Only the man's lips and tattoo are coloured.

Artist / maker

von Stillfried-Ratenicz, Franz

Date

1881

Size

24 x 19.5 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Art and Design Library

This item is part of a collection of prints from the studio of Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz, an Austrian photographer practising in Japan in the late 1870's. Von Stillfried ran a studio in Yokohama at the same time as his brother Raimund, who was also known as 'Baron Stillfried'. This caused a great deal of confusion with the local residents and visitors to Japan in the Meiji Period, and with art historians today.

This album, which dates from 1879-83, comprises 67 separate mounted prints presented in a lacquerware box. Albums of this kind were popular among foreign tourists, who frequently selected the individual prints they wished to include from the studio's collection. Many of these albumen prints were hand tinted. This was a laborious process for which von Stillfried employed, at the height of his success, a substantial number of Japanese workers. In this particular photograph, the painter chose to colour only the tattoo to emphasise on its intricate design.

Tattoos ('irezumi') were a popular symbol of virility in the Edo era (1603-1868) and were usually visible on labourers, palanquin carriers and firemen. During the Meiji era (1868-1912), the imperial government banned tattoos, considering them as a barbaric tradition. At the same time, Western visitors to Japan and in particular sailors started to get tattooed by local artists and thus spread Japanese tattoos to the West.

The University of Nagasaki owns three copies of this photograph with slightly different hand-colouring. Nude Japanese men with tattooed backs must have been an impressive sight to Western travellers to Japan. They became a popular design and their pictures were taken by many different photographers, which is why these images are difficult to attribute today. There are two other photographs featuring tattooed men in this particular album.
The scene the tattoo depicts may be based on a design by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861), a famous print-maker and painter. His series untitled 'One hundred and eight heroes of the popular Suikoden all told', inspired by a famous Chinese tale, served as model for many tattoos during this period.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Hairstyles

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Tattoos

People > Adults > Men

Places > Asia > Japan