How is Japanese tattooing different from styles seen in the Pacific Islands?
The Pacific tattoo is very different in several ways. In the West, the types of tattoos, particularly the ones we were used to seeing 15 or 20 years ago, were the collector’s style. You got little things here and there; it came out of the tradition of sailors who went some where and returned with a tattoo and could say, “I got this in Hong Kong or Japan.” The Japanese style, generally speaking, shows one story on one body. It is integrated and usually figurative. There could be dragons or warriors and there is usually a myth behind the images. So the Japanese style is pictoral whilet the Polynesian style is much more abstract. Particularly in the South Pacific where they did not have access to colors, the styke is characterized by black design. In the US, this style became popular in prisons because they also didn’t have access to colors. I don’t think it had the same family significance in Japan as it did in the South Pacific. Although in Japan there were groups that used a similar de
