{ "type": "tradition", "count": 28, "nodes": [ { "schema": 1, "id": "ainu-anchi-piri", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Ainu anchi-piri", "local": "アンチピリ", "local_lang": "Ainu", "said": "anchi-piri — the obsidian cut; a woman's mouth, widening for years" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "cut", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1600, "to": 1900, "circa": true, "label": "Prohibited under Japanese rule; the last tattooed women died in the twentieth century" }, "practice": { "method": "cut", "ink": "indigo", "placement": [ "face", "arms", "hands" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "JP", "RU" ], "first_record": 1800, "break": [ 1900, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "prohibited under Japanese administration in the nineteenth century", "note": "Begun between five and thirteen, enlarged until marriage." }, "text": { "what": "Hokkaido and Sakhalin: a woman's mouth ringed with indigo, begun in childhood and widened until she was ready to marry.", "story": "The Ainu word *anchi-piri* carries the tool inside it — obsidian, and a cut. Ink came from the indigo plant. The mark was made by women on women, on the mouth, the forearms and the backs of the hands, and it grew with its owner: a small mark at five to thirteen, widened over years, finished when she married.\n\nThe Japanese state prohibited it. What happened next is the same everywhere on this site: the practice stops, the women who have it grow old, and the only pictures left are the ones outsiders took." }, "text_th": { "what": "ฮกไกโดและซาฮาลิน รอบปากผู้หญิงด้วยสีคราม เริ่มตั้งแต่เด็กและขยายขึ้นจนถึงวัยแต่งงาน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "cut", "as": "The method — a cut rubbed with pigment, not a puncture.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "irezumi", "as": "The other Japanese tradition, and the one the word usually means.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Ainu people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-ainu-people", "s:wp-irezumi" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-ainu-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "ban" ], "images": [ { "file": "ainu-anchi-piri/ainu-anchi-piri-ainu-woman-from-a-book-published-in-1931-p-81.png", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Ainu woman (from a book Published in 1931) P.81.png", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Ainu_woman_%28from_a_book_Published_in_1931%29_P.81.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAinu_woman_%28from_a_book_Published_in_1931%29_P.81.png", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Unknown authorUnknown author", "credit": "新光社 編「世界地理風俗大系. 別巻〔第3〕」1931年発行\n\nhttps://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1876894", "alt": "入れ墨を入れたアイヌの女性（1931年出版の本より）", "date": "1931", "primary": true, "sha256": "7600424b09ceaf0d3ceab655e7a43751241e5d0097ae278ef29d5092eeaf7a0d" }, { "file": "ainu-anchi-piri/ainu-anchi-piri-the-races-of-man-figure-49-ia-deniofmanoutlinraces00rich.png", "source": "commons", "title": "File:The races of man, figure 49 (IA deniofmanoutlinraces00rich).png", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/The_races_of_man%2C_figure_49_%28IA_deniofmanoutlinraces00rich%29.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_races_of_man%2C_figure_49_%28IA_deniofmanoutlinraces00rich%29.png", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Joseph Deniker", "credit": "The races of man: an outline of anthropology and ethnography (1906)", "alt": "Caption: \"Fig. 49 - Ainu woman tattooed round the lips.\"", "date": "2011-10-19", "primary": false, "sha256": "d0fbf54e87ac8fb59e1d8f88182238a8b6e39c938df0a2c4206f9762732f4405" } ], "geo": { "lat": 43.3, "lon": 142.8, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "irezumi", "type": "tradition", "name": "Irezumi", "as": "The other tradition in the same islands, which the word also covers." }, { "from": "indigo", "type": "ink", "name": "Indigo", "as": "Where it goes." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "amazigh-marks", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Amazigh marks", "local": "ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ", "local_lang": "Tamazight", "aliases": [ "Berber tattoos", "siyala" ], "said": "Chin, forehead, hands and ankles, in lines and diamonds" }, "region": [ "north-africa" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": -1000, "to": 1980, "circa": true, "label": "Largely ended in the twentieth century under religious discouragement" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "hands", "arms", "legs" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "MA", "DZ", "TN", "LY" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1980, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "religious discouragement and urbanisation", "note": "Marks read as protective and as a statement of group; the meanings were rarely written down by the women who wore them." }, "text": { "what": "North Africa: women's chin, forehead and hand marks, in a geometric vocabulary shared with weaving and pottery.", "story": "The motifs are the same motifs that appear on textiles and on painted pottery, which is the pattern seen in the Philippines too: the tattoo is not a separate art but the same design language put on a person.\n\n*Inference —* a great deal of what is published about the meanings of these marks is collected from outside and late. This record says what the marks look like and where they go, and holds off on what each one meant." }, "text_th": { "what": "แอฟริกาเหนือ ลายบนคาง หน้าผาก และมือของผู้หญิง ใช้ชุดลายเรขาคณิตเดียวกับผ้าทอและเครื่องปั้น" }, "links": [ { "label": "Berbers", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbers" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-berbers" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "tradition" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women", "protective" ], "geo": { "lat": 31.5, "lon": -6.5, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "deq", "type": "tradition", "name": "Deq", "as": "The neighbouring tradition across North Africa." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "atayal-ptasan", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Atayal ptasan", "local": "ptasan", "local_lang": "Squliq Atayal", "said": "Forehead for both; a man's chin when he fathers a child; a woman's cheeks when she can weave" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1600, "to": 1930, "circa": true, "label": "Banned by the Japanese administration in 1930" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chin" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "TW" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1930, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "banned by the Japanese colonial administration in 1930, for its link to headhunting", "note": "A qualification, not an ornament: the face says the skill has been demonstrated." }, "text": { "what": "Taiwan: a band down the forehead, and a second mark earned — by a man for taking a head, by a woman for mastering the loom.", "story": "The rule was a gate. No face marks, no marriage; no face marks, no crossing to the ancestors at death. A girl learned to weave at ten or twelve and had to master it before her cheeks were marked, which makes the tattoo a certificate of competence held on the most visible surface a person has.\n\nJapan banned it in 1930. Christianity finished the job. The marks are now on elderly faces and on the museum wall." }, "text_th": { "what": "ไต้หวัน แถบกลางหน้าผากสำหรับทุกคน และรอยที่สองที่ต้องได้มา ชายด้วยการล่าหัว หญิงด้วยการทอผ้าได้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "chin-ming", "as": "Another face, another government, thirty years apart.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Atayal people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atayal_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-atayal-people", "s:wp-taiwanese-indigenous-peoples" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-atayal-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "ban", "women", "initiation" ], "geo": { "lat": 24.2, "lon": 121.2, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "as": "And another, banned by another government in another decade." }, { "from": "the-timing", "type": "rite", "name": "When it is done", "as": "Stacked with fatherhood and with the loom." }, { "from": "meiji-ban", "type": "story", "name": "Japan outlaws it", "as": "And who else again." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "batok", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Batok", "local": "batok", "local_lang": "Kalinga", "aliases": [ "batek", "patik", "burik", "fatek", "whatok" ], "said": "Tapped, not poked — a thorn set crosswise on a stick and struck" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": -1500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Hafted tattoo tools at Arku Cave before 1500 BCE; still being tapped in Buscalan" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "tool": "gisi-pat-ik", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "chest", "hands", "back", "legs" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "PH" ], "first_record": -1500, "first_record_note": "chisel and serrated heads of probable hafted tattoo instruments, Arku Cave, Cagayan", "sessions": "acquired over years, a panel at a time", "note": "Men's chest work was earned by taking a head; women's arms by other measures." }, "text": { "what": "The Philippine traditions, tapped with a hafted thorn at ninety to a hundred and twenty strikes a minute.", "story": "The Spanish called the Visayans *Pintados*, the painted ones, and recorded the tattoo as dress: a naked man \"appears to be dressed in a kind of handsome armor engraved with very fine work\" — worn at home with nothing but a loincloth, because the marks were the clothes.\n\nThe method is Austronesian and it is not poking. A needle — thorn, bone, horn, bamboo — is set perpendicular to a wooden handle in an L, and a second stick taps the handle. The hand that holds the tool never pushes; it positions. Ink is soot or ash in water, oil, cane juice or pig bile, and the design is laid out first in ink with a blade of grass or a length of string.\n\nAmong Cordilleran peoples tattoos were a form of clothing in the same explicit sense: to have none was to be naked. Chest work was not applied to a man until he had taken a head — which is why copying those designs today is held to be a bad idea, and why the men who fought in the 1960s and 70s were advised by elders not to take them.", "today": "Whang-od is ninety-something and tattooing in Buscalan; her apprentices are women, which breaks the inheritance rule her own community ran on, and her community accepted it. Around her there is a revival with a problem inside it: which designs are open." }, "text_th": { "what": "ธรรมเนียมฟิลิปปินส์ ใช้หนามติดด้ามแล้ว *ตอก* ด้วยไม้อีกอัน 90–120 ครั้งต่อนาที ไม่ใช่การแทงด้วยมือ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tap", "as": "The method, and why this site does not call it hand-poke.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "whang-od", "as": "Who is still doing it.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "\"Dressed in a kind of handsome armor\" — the third of the three.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "arku-cave", "as": "The tools, dug up, older than the Roman Empire by a millennium.", "rel": "find" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Batok", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batok" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-whang-od", "s:wp-kalinga-province" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here", "revival", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "batok/batok-mambabatok.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Mambabatok.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Mambabatok.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMambabatok.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "CharMel Creations", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "This is popularly referred as 'batok' or art of tattooing your body with tribal designs using bamboo sticks and thorns. This artform is still alive in the mountains of Kalinga.", "date": "2023-03-27", "primary": true, "sha256": "eaa1f6579cf7c20edd8a05fecbaa915ccaff0e8f3ef9290bc421fd743998f053" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "appears to be dressed in a kind of handsome armor engraved with very fine work… their dress at home and in their barrio is their tattoos and a bahag", "lang": "Spanish, of Visayan work", "source": "s:wp-batok", "year": 1668, "garment": "armour" }, "geo": { "lat": 17.3, "lon": 121.1, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "kalinga-cordillera", "type": "tradition", "name": "Cordilleran whatok", "as": "The wider Philippine family this sits inside." }, { "from": "konyak-naga", "type": "tradition", "name": "Konyak marks", "as": "Same structure, different island: the chest is earned." }, { "from": "tap", "type": "method", "name": "Tap", "as": "Where it is still being done daily." }, { "from": "gisi-pat-ik", "type": "tool", "name": "Gisi and pat-ik", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "gayaman", "type": "motif", "name": "The centipede", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "whang-od", "type": "person", "name": "Whang-od Oggay", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Handsome armor." }, { "from": "pintados", "type": "story", "name": "The painted ones", "as": "The tradition." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "my": "ချင်း", "local": "Ming", "local_lang": "Chin", "aliases": [ "Ming", "Chin face tattoo" ], "said": "Lines and dots set across a woman's face, by tribe" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia", "south-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1800, "to": 1960, "circa": true, "label": "Banned in the 1960s; the last tattooed women are elderly" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "indigo", "placement": [ "face" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "MM" ], "first_record": 1900, "first_record_note": "the Gazetteer of Upper Burma notices it in passing, and with contempt", "break": [ 1965, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "banned in the 1960s by Burma's Union Revolutionary Council; discouraged by Christian and Buddhist missionaries", "note": "Girls of fifteen to twenty. The design says which tribe, not which family." }, "text": { "what": "Women's faces, marked between fifteen and twenty, in a pattern that names the tribe: full-face, part-face, dots, lines, or both.", "story": "The designs differ by group and the differences are the point. M'kaan, Daai and Yin Du women are tattooed across the whole face; N'men and Matu women on certain parts of it; the Uppriu cover the face in dots; Ngagah mix vertical lines with dots; Daai set dots among vertical and horizontal lines on forehead and cheeks. Mro women wear small marks or stars on cheek, forehead or breast and tie them to fertility.\n\nThe explanation attached to the custom in almost every outside source is abduction: that a king took a beautiful Chin woman, that she disguised herself to get home, and that families marked their daughters so that no one would carry them off. The nineteenth-century British gazetteer repeats the abduction story and then adds that the anxiety \"seems hardly justified by any beauty in the women themselves.\"\n\n*Inference —* that sentence is worth leaving in. It is the clearest single demonstration on this site of what the colonial record is: the only written source for a great deal of this, and written by men who held the people they were describing in contempt. Read the fact, discount the frame.", "today": "Banned in the 1960s and discouraged by missionaries before that, the practice ended inside one generation. The women who carry it are elderly, and they are photographed constantly by visitors to the Chin hills. Whether that is documentation or a trade in faces is not a question this site settles.", "notes": "Northern and southern Chin groups differ; this record does not flatten sixty sub-groups into one design." }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The other Burmese tradition, and the one that was not banned.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "who-wrote-it-down", "as": "The clearest case of the problem with the only sources there are.", "rel": "issue" }, { "to": "derung-face", "as": "Another women's facial tattoo with an abduction story attached to it.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "atayal-ptasan", "as": "And another, banned by another government in another decade.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Chin people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chin_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-chin-people", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar", "s:gazetteer-1", "s:gazetteer-3" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-chin-people" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:gazetteer-3" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "ban", "colonial-record" ], "images": [ { "file": "chin-ming/chin-ming-a-letu-chin-woman-with-a-tattoo-face.png", "source": "commons", "title": "File:A Letu Chin Woman with A Tattoo Face.png", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/A_Letu_Chin_Woman_with_A_Tattoo_Face.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AA_Letu_Chin_Woman_with_A_Tattoo_Face.png", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "AungLaytu", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "This Letu Chin Women is from Heyzawlay village, the Upper Sen Stream, Minbya township, Rakhine state.", "date": "2025-11-21", "primary": true, "sha256": "1c0b1f9657297be6954def47040553b14a681aaf174d6f90463f68183a49428e" }, { "file": "chin-ming/chin-ming-chin-women-with-face-tattoos-7479947494.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Chin women with face tattoos (7479947494).jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Chin_women_with_face_tattoos_%287479947494%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChin_women_with_face_tattoos_%287479947494%29.jpg", "license": "CC BY 2.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/", "author": "DANIEL JULIE from Paris, France", "credit": "DSC00015/Burma/Chin State/Posing for the Photo", "alt": "Two mother tattooed accept easely the pose for my camera\nThe Chin tribe people , are one of the large ethnic minority groups in Burma. The Chin people are of Tibeto-Burman groups and they probably ca", "date": "2012-03-17 17:07", "primary": false, "sha256": "de291efbfa070177eca94101eafd4c39cd4abbecd8c8ad0f2cac7a5e39278115" } ], "geo": { "lat": 21.5, "lon": 93.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "atayal-ptasan", "type": "tradition", "name": "Atayal ptasan", "as": "Another face, another government, thirty years apart." }, { "from": "derung-face", "type": "tradition", "name": "Derung face marks", "as": "The same story told about another set of women." }, { "from": "chin-grid", "type": "motif", "name": "The face grids", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "chin-ban", "type": "story", "name": "The Chin ban", "as": "What was banned." }, { "from": "who-wrote-it-down", "type": "issue", "name": "Who wrote it down", "as": "Where the contempt is on the page." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "coptic-pilgrim", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "local": "Copt", "local_lang": "Coptic", "aliases": [ "Jerusalem tattoo", "Razzouk" ], "said": "A cross on the wrist, given to pilgrims for seven centuries" }, "region": [ "west-asia", "north-africa" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1300, "to": 2026, "label": "A single family has been tattooing pilgrims for about 700 years" }, "practice": { "method": "mixed", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "hands", "arms", "chest" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "kin", "status": "living", "countries": [ "IL", "PS", "EG", "ET" ], "first_record": 1300, "note": "Carved wooden stamps print the design; the marks go on by hand and, since the 1950s, by machine." }, "text": { "what": "Jerusalem and Egypt: a cross on the inside of the wrist, marking a pilgrimage — and a family that has been doing it for around seven hundred years.", "story": "The Razzouk family carries the trade from Egypt to Jerusalem and still holds the carved olive-wood blocks that print the designs onto the skin before the needle follows. Coptic Christians in Egypt wear the wrist cross as an everyday identification, not only as a souvenir of a journey.\n\n*Inference —* the wooden design blocks are the same idea as the Borneo stamp and the Burmese sample book: a hand tradition that needs a repertoire invents a way to store it outside a person's memory." }, "text_th": { "what": "เยรูซาเลมและอียิปต์ ไม้กางเขนบนข้อมือด้านใน เครื่องหมายของการจาริก และครอบครัวหนึ่งทำมาราวเจ็ดร้อยปี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sicanje", "as": "Christian marks made by pricking, at the other end of the Mediterranean.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "The same solution to the same problem: carve the design into wood.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Razzouk Tattoo", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razzouk_Tattoo" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo", "s:wp-copts" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "protective" ], "geo": { "lat": 31.78, "lon": 35.22, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sicanje", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sicanje", "as": "The other Christian hand-poke tradition on this site." }, { "from": "design-block", "type": "tool", "name": "The design block", "as": "The block, still in use." }, { "from": "pilgrim-cross", "type": "motif", "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "deq", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Deq", "local": "deq", "local_lang": "Kurdish", "aliases": [ "daq", "vesm" ], "said": "From Syriac dyoqo, puncturing" }, "region": [ "west-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": -500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Older than the three religions of the region; now mostly on elderly faces" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-milk", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "neck", "hands", "feet", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "TR", "IQ", "SY", "IR" ], "first_record": 1900, "note": "Soot mixed with breast milk is the reported ink; a V on the face could say the tribe." }, "text": { "what": "Kurdistan: marks on women's faces, hands and feet, for protection, for health, and to say which tribe.", "story": "The word comes from Syriac *dyoqo*, puncturing — another tradition that names the tattoo after the movement of the needle. A male tattooist is *deqqak*, a female one *deqqake*; the practice predates Christianity, Yazidism and Islam in the region, and rules attach to it, including who may not receive it." }, "text_th": { "what": "เคอร์ดิสถาน ลายบนใบหน้า มือ และเท้าของผู้หญิง เพื่อคุ้มครอง เพื่อสุขภาพ และเพื่อบอกเผ่า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "words", "as": "Another word for tattoo that means to puncture.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "amazigh-marks", "as": "The neighbouring tradition across North Africa.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Deq (tattoo)", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deq_(tattoo)" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-deq-tattoo", "s:wp-kurds" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-deq-tattoo" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "protective" ], "geo": { "lat": 37.5, "lon": 42.5, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "soot-milk", "type": "ink", "name": "Soot and milk", "as": "Where it goes." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "derung-face", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Derung face marks", "local": "独龙族", "local_lang": "Chinese", "aliases": [ "Dulong" ], "said": "Marked at twelve or thirteen, in a pattern some describe as a moustache" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1800, "to": 1960, "circa": true, "label": "The last tattooed Derung women are elderly" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "CN" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1967, 2026 ], "note": "Yunnan, in the gorges of the upper Salween and Irrawaddy." }, "text": { "what": "Yunnan: Derung women marked on the face at twelve or thirteen, in a tradition now carried by a handful of elders.", "story": "The same abduction story attaches here as in the Chin hills — that the marks were meant to make a woman unattractive to raiders. *Inference —* the story turns up wherever a colonising or dominant neighbour is in the picture, and it is always told about the women of the smaller group. It may be true in some places. It is also the explanation most convenient to everyone except the women wearing the marks." }, "text_th": { "what": "ยูนนาน หญิงชาวตู้หลงถูกสักหน้าเมื่ออายุสิบสองสิบสาม ปัจจุบันเหลือผู้เฒ่าไม่กี่คน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "chin-ming", "as": "The same story told about another set of women.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Derung people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derung_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-derung-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-derung-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women" ], "geo": { "lat": 27.8, "lon": 98.3, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "as": "Another women's facial tattoo with an abduction story attached to it." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "godna", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Godna", "local": "गोदना", "local_lang": "Hindi", "aliases": [ "khoda", "godhana" ], "said": "godna — to prick" }, "region": [ "south-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1700, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Carried by tattooing castes and by women of many tribal communities; thinning" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "face", "chin", "legs", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "IN", "NP", "GY", "TT" ], "first_record": 1800, "note": "Women tattooing women, often for a small fee, village to village." }, "text": { "what": "Northern and central India: women's marks, pricked by women, carried out of India to the Caribbean by indentured labour.", "story": "*Godna* is the verb *to prick*, which puts it in the same family as *sak*, *kaki-*, and *deq*: the word for the tattoo is the word for what the needle does. The designs go on arms, hands, legs and face, and the practice runs through Baiga, Oraon, Birhor, Munda, Santal and many other communities, each with its own repertoire.\n\nIt travelled. The tattoo went with indentured workers to Guyana and Trinidad, which makes it one of very few traditions on this site with a diaspora that kept the marks." }, "text_th": { "what": "อินเดียเหนือและตอนกลาง ลายของผู้หญิง แทงโดยผู้หญิง และติดตามแรงงานอพยพข้ามไปถึงแคริบเบียน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "words", "as": "Another word for tattoo that means to prick.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Godna", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godna" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-godna", "s:wp-munda-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-godna" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women" ], "geo": { "lat": 23.5, "lon": 82.5, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hajichi", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Hajichi", "local": "針突", "local_lang": "Okinawan", "said": "hajichi — the needle-struck marks on a woman's hands" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1600, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Banned by Japan in 1899; taken up again by Okinawan women in the 2010s" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "hands", "fingers", "arms" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "JP" ], "first_record": 1700, "break": [ 1899, 2015 ], "revived": 2015, "suppressed_by": "prohibited by the Japanese government in 1899 as part of the assimilation of the Ryukyus", "note": "Backs of the hands and the fingers; marks added at betrothal and marriage." }, "text": { "what": "The Ryukyu Islands: marks on the backs of women's hands, outlawed by Japan in 1899 and now being put back on.", "story": "*Hajichi* went on the hands, where nothing conceals them, and it recorded a woman's passage — first marks in girlhood, more at betrothal, the set completed at marriage. Japan prohibited it in 1899 while assimilating the Ryukyu kingdom, and enforcement was real enough that the practice went underground and then out.\n\n*Inference —* the ban's design is worth noticing. A mark on the hands cannot be covered by clothing, which makes it the easiest tattoo in the world to police and the hardest to keep quietly.", "notes": "Okinawan women, in Okinawa and in the diaspora, have been taking hajichi up again; this site has no count of how many." }, "text_th": { "what": "หมู่เกาะริวกิว ลายบนหลังมือผู้หญิง ถูกญี่ปุ่นสั่งห้ามในปี 1899 และกำลังถูกนำกลับมา" }, "kin": [ { "to": "irezumi", "as": "Banned by the same state, twenty-seven years apart.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "On the revival list.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Irezumi", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irezumi" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi", "s:wp-meiji-era" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "tradition" }, "fields": { "practice.break": { "tier": "tradition", "note": "the 1899 prohibition is widely reported; this site has not seen the instrument itself" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women", "ban", "revival" ], "geo": { "lat": 26.34, "lon": 127.8, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "body", "type": "story", "name": "Where the marks go", "as": "The hands, and the 1899 prohibition." }, { "from": "meiji-ban", "type": "story", "name": "Japan outlaws it", "as": "And who else." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hlai-marks", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Hlai women's marks", "local": "黎族", "local_lang": "Chinese", "aliases": [ "Li people tattoo" ], "said": "Face, throat and legs, by lineage" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1300, "to": 1950, "circa": true, "label": "Ended in the mid-twentieth century" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "neck", "legs", "arms" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "CN" ], "first_record": 1300, "break": [ 1950, 2026 ], "note": "Hainan island; the pattern differed by lineage group." }, "text": { "what": "Hainan: Hlai women marked on face, throat, arms and legs in patterns that told one lineage from another.", "story": "Chinese records notice tattooing among non-Han peoples as far north as the Yangzi in the first millennium, which is the same body of record that the Southeast Asian traditions on this site appear in — as somebody else's custom, seen from outside." }, "text_th": { "what": "ไหหลำ หญิงชาวหลีสักหน้า คอ แขน ขา ด้วยลายที่บอกสายตระกูล" }, "links": [ { "label": "Hlai people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hlai_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-hlai-people", "s:wp-hainan", "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-hlai-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women" ], "geo": { "lat": 19.0, "lon": 109.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Htoe kwin", "my": "ထိုးကွင်း", "local": "ထိုးကွင်း", "local_lang": "Burmese", "aliases": [ "Burmese thigh tattoo", "Lethwei leg tattoo" ], "said": "htó-kwìn — the pricked rings" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1100, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Tang-dynasty notice of tattooed Pyu dancers; thinning after 1900, still done" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "hnitkwasok", "ink": "lampblack", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "legs", "knees", "thighs" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "MM" ], "first_record": 1882, "first_record_note": "the fullest description this site can name is Shway Yoe's, 1882; the custom is far older", "suppressed_by": "no ban — colonial rule and town life, in Shway Yoe's own account and the Wikipedia summary of it", "sessions": "three to six days for the whole; three or four figures at a sitting", "note": "Boys of eight to fourteen, waist to just past the kneecap, in framed animals." }, "text": { "what": "Every up-country Burmese man wore one: a sheet of dark-blue animals from the navel to below the knee, begun in boyhood.", "story": "Shway Yoe — the pen name of Sir James George Scott, who lived in Burma and wrote the fullest account of it in English — opens the chapter flatly: a Burmese youth counts his thigh tattooing as important as his entry into a monastery, and until it is done \"there may be doubts as to his thorough manhood.\"\n\nThe finished work runs from a line level with the navel to just past the kneecap, and he reaches for a garment to describe it: not a marking of the skin so much as **\"a skin-tight pair of caleçons, fitting better than the best glove ever made.\"** The figures are tigers, cats, monkeys, elephants, *nats* and *bilus* — each one framed in an oval of letters, each frame its own setting, the gaps filled with the same tracery.\n\nThe frame is the tell. The animals are not a scene; they are a repeating field of self-contained units, which is why the whole reads at a distance as cloth rather than as a picture.\n\n*Attested —* a good *saya* carried a sample book of drawings so the boy could pick his patterns and their places before the opium went in. A tattoo studio's flash sheet, in Burma, in 1882.", "today": "Lethwei fighters — Burmese bareknuckle boxers — carry the leg work as the sport's own mark, and the Wikipedia article on tattooing in Myanmar records fighters describing the sitting, up to 24 hours across both legs, as the thing to be endured without showing it. Outside the ring it is a thinning tradition rather than a general one.", "notes": "Shway Yoe reports and then refuses a claim: that the custom began for a \"shameful reason assigned by foreign writers.\" He does not repeat the reason and says no Burman believes it. This site does the same." }, "text_th": { "what": "ชายพม่าหัวเมืองเกือบทุกคนมีลายนี้ สัตว์สีน้ำเงินเข้มเต็มผืนตั้งแต่ระดับสะดือลงไปใต้เข่า เริ่มตั้งแต่ยังเป็นเด็ก", "story": "เชวโย นามปากกาของเซอร์เจมส์ จอร์จ สก็อตต์ ผู้ใช้ชีวิตในพม่าและเขียนบันทึกภาษาอังกฤษที่ละเอียดที่สุดไว้ เปิดบทด้วยประโยคตรงๆ ว่า ชายหนุ่มพม่าถือว่าการสักต้นขาสำคัญเท่ากับการบวช และก่อนจะสักเสร็จ ความเป็นชายเต็มตัวของเขายังน่าสงสัย\n\nงานที่เสร็จแล้วกินตั้งแต่แนวสะดือถึงใต้ลูกสะบ้า และเขาเลือกใช้คำเรียกเสื้อผ้าอธิบายมัน ไม่ใช่รอยบนผิวหนังเท่ากับ **\"กางเกงรัดรูปที่เข้ารูปยิ่งกว่าถุงมือ\"** ลายเป็นเสือ แมว ลิง ช้าง นัต และบีลู แต่ละตัวมีกรอบตัวอักษรล้อมเป็นวงรี ช่องว่างถมด้วยลายเดียวกัน\n\nกรอบคือจุดสังเกต สัตว์เหล่านี้ไม่ได้ประกอบเป็นภาพเดียว แต่เป็นหน่วยซ้ำๆ เต็มผืน จึงมองไกลๆ แล้วอ่านเป็นผ้า ไม่ใช่ภาพ", "today": "นักมวยเลธเวยถือลายขาเป็นเครื่องหมายของกีฬา และบทความวิกิพีเดียบันทึกคำของนักมวยว่าการสักทั้งสองขาใช้เวลาถึง 24 ชั่วโมง และต้องทนโดยไม่แสดงออก นอกสังเวียน ธรรมเนียมนี้เหลือน้อยลงมาก" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border east, and far less written down.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "hnitkwasok", "as": "The two-foot brass pricker that made it.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "Who Shway Yoe says did the charm work, and did more of it.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shway-yoe", "as": "Who wrote it down, and what that costs the record.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "\"A skin-tight pair of caleçons\" — one of the three.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "vermilion", "as": "The other colour: charms, in red, which fade.", "rel": "ink" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Tattooing in Myanmar", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattooing_in_Myanmar" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar", "s:gazetteer-2", "s:milne-shans" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text.today": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" }, "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here", "initiation", "colonial-record" ], "images": [ { "file": "htoe-kwin/htoe-kwin-burmese-tattooing.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Burmese tattooing.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Burmese_tattooing.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABurmese_tattooing.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Philip Adolphe Klier", "credit": "Customs of the World", "alt": "Burmese tattooingEvery Burman who has any self-respect is tattooed in blue from the waist, about the top of the cloth to the knee. The figures of tigers, ogres and so forth are encircled with scroll l", "date": "1912", "primary": true, "sha256": "5af5015e2508c7af07339eef921160e53eed69fa922eb70cfc8be02591f425c0" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "not so much of a marking of the cuticle as of a skin-tight pair of caleçons, fitting better than the best glove ever made", "lang": "English, of Burmese work", "source": "s:shway-yoe", "year": 1882, "garment": "trousers" }, "geo": { "lat": 21.96, "lon": 96.09, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "as": "The other Burmese tradition, and the one that was not banned." }, { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border west. The Burmese work is the better recorded of the two." }, { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "Who they learned it from, if Milne is right — and she hedges." }, { "from": "design-block", "type": "tool", "name": "The design block", "as": "The sample book, 1882." }, { "from": "hnitkwasok", "type": "tool", "name": "Hnitkwasok", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "lampblack", "type": "ink", "name": "Lampblack", "as": "What it drew." }, { "from": "cat-monkey", "type": "motif", "name": "Cats and monkeys", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "framed-animal", "type": "motif", "name": "The framed animal", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "the-pain", "type": "rite", "name": "Bearing it", "as": "Where the opium comes in." }, { "from": "the-timing", "type": "rite", "name": "When it is done", "as": "Stacked with ordination." }, { "from": "saya-chein", "type": "person", "name": "Saya Chein", "as": "His work." }, { "from": "shway-yoe", "type": "person", "name": "Shway Yoe", "as": "What he described." }, { "from": "mandalay", "type": "place", "name": "Mandalay", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Caleçons." }, { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "The Burmese side." }, { "from": "sample-book", "type": "art", "name": "The sample book", "as": "The work it was for." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "iban-borneo", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Iban tattooing", "local": "pantang", "local_lang": "Iban", "aliases": [ "bungai terung", "entegulun" ], "said": "A journey mark, a headhunter's hands, an aubergine flower on each shoulder" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1850, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Described by Hose and McDougall in 1912; carried by the last headhunters into the 2000s" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "hands", "fingers", "arms", "chest", "back", "legs" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "MY", "ID" ], "first_record": 1912, "note": "Hand tattoos say what the man did; the shoulder flower says he left home." }, "text": { "what": "Borneo: tapped designs carved on a block and printed onto the skin, with hand marks reserved for a man who had taken a head.", "story": "The Iban mark a journey. *Bungai terung*, the aubergine flower, goes on each shoulder when a young man leaves on *bejalai* — the walkabout that makes him an adult. The *entegulun*, the hand tattoo, is not a decoration: it records that the wearer took a head. Anthony Bourdain filmed one of the last men entitled to it.\n\nThe design source is the striking part. Borneo tattooists carved patterns onto wooden blocks, inked the block, printed it onto the skin, and then tapped along the printed line — a stamp, a stencil and a tool in one, and a way of keeping a repertoire that does not depend on memory.", "notes": "Hose and McDougall, 1912, are the fullest colonial description and carry the usual freight; the Iban record their own designs now." }, "text_th": { "what": "เกาะบอร์เนียว ลายแกะบนแม่พิมพ์ไม้ ประทับลงผิวแล้วตอกตามเส้น ลายมือสงวนให้ชายที่ได้หัวศัตรูมาแล้ว" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tap", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "kayan-borneo", "as": "Upriver, and mostly women's work.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Iban people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iban_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-iban-people", "s:hose-borneo-2" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-iban-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "colonial-record", "initiation" ], "geo": { "lat": 2.3, "lon": 112.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "coptic-pilgrim", "type": "tradition", "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "as": "The same solution to the same problem: carve the design into wood." }, { "from": "kayan-borneo", "type": "tradition", "name": "Kayan tattooing", "as": "Downriver, and mostly men's." }, { "from": "konyak-naga", "type": "tradition", "name": "Konyak marks", "as": "And the hands." }, { "from": "design-block", "type": "tool", "name": "The design block", "as": "The block." }, { "from": "bungai-terung", "type": "motif", "name": "The aubergine flower", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "irezumi", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Irezumi", "local": "入れ墨", "local_lang": "Japanese", "aliases": [ "tebori", "horimono" ], "said": "ire-zumi — inserting ink" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1700, "to": 2026, "label": "Outlawed in the Meiji period, legalised in 1948, still marked as criminal" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "nomi", "ink": "nara-ink", "placement": [ "back", "chest", "arms", "legs", "whole-body" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "living", "countries": [ "JP" ], "first_record": 1700, "suppressed_by": "outlawed at the opening of the Meiji period; legalised by the occupation in 1948", "sessions": "years of weekly sittings for a full suit", "note": "Needles bound to a wooden handle with silk thread, pushed by hand at an angle." }, "text": { "what": "Japan: needles bound with silk to a wooden rod, worked by hand — *tebori*, carving by hand — over years, in a design that covers the body like a garment.", "story": "The word says the method: *irezumi*, inserting ink. Nara ink goes grey-blue under the skin. A full back piece is not a session but a relationship, and the shape it takes — shoulders, chest panels, a gap down the sternum — is a suit of clothes that can be closed over.\n\nThe Meiji government outlawed it while courting foreign opinion, and foreigners promptly came to Japan to be tattooed. The occupation legalised it in 1948. Japanese law then held for decades that tattooing needed a medical licence, until a 2020 decision ended that. The criminal association it acquired under the ban has outlived the ban by seventy years." }, "text_th": { "what": "ญี่ปุ่น เข็มมัดด้วยไหมติดด้ามไม้ ทำด้วยมือ — *เทโบริ* — ต่อเนื่องหลายปี จนลายคลุมตัวเหมือนเสื้อผ้า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "nomi", "as": "The tool.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "meiji-ban", "as": "The ban that made it criminal.", "rel": "story" }, { "to": "ainu-anchi-piri", "as": "The other tradition in the same islands, which the word also covers.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Irezumi", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irezumi" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi", "s:wp-horimono", "s:wp-yakuza" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "ban", "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "irezumi/irezumi-roshi-ensei-lifting-a-heavy-beam.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Roshi Ensei lifting a heavy beam.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Roshi_Ensei_lifting_a_heavy_beam.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARoshi_Ensei_lifting_a_heavy_beam.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Utagawa Kuniyoshi", "credit": "http://visipix.com/search/search.php?userid=1616934267&q=%272aAuthors/K/Kuniyoshi%201797-1861%2C%20Utagawa%2C%20Japan%27&s=23&l=en&u=2&ub=1&k=1tm", "alt": "This print illustrates a wrestling match where Yan Qing the Graceful (Roshi Ensei) with all his body tattooed is lifting a heavy beam.", "date": "before 1861date QS:P,+1861-00-00T00:00:0", "primary": true, "sha256": "c0ff5177d5012fb98a84dc3b979f3f9918a6b1164a204847b9788b67ce748f19" }, { "file": "irezumi/irezumi-senkaji-chao-wringing-out-hin-loincloth.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Senkaji Chao wringing out hin loincloth.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Senkaji_Chao_wringing_out_hin_loincloth.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASenkaji_Chao_wringing_out_hin_loincloth.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "", "credit": "", "alt": "Senkaji Chao wringing out hin loincloth.jpg", "date": "", "primary": false, "sha256": "6cfdc131ebb09e127fe84b43be2b1c6ad2f9dd6e36a392f5bebd268c909207dc" } ], "geo": { "lat": 35.68, "lon": 139.69, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "ainu-anchi-piri", "type": "tradition", "name": "Ainu anchi-piri", "as": "The other Japanese tradition, and the one the word usually means." }, { "from": "hajichi", "type": "tradition", "name": "Hajichi", "as": "Banned by the same state, twenty-seven years apart." }, { "from": "nomi", "type": "tool", "name": "Nomi", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "nara-ink", "type": "ink", "name": "Nara ink", "as": "Where it goes." }, { "from": "meiji-ban", "type": "story", "name": "Japan outlaws it", "as": "What was banned." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kakiniit", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Kakiniit", "local": "ᑲᑭᓐᓃᑦ", "local_lang": "Inuktitut", "aliases": [ "tunniit", "kakiniq" ], "said": "kakiniq — from a root meaning to pierce or prick" }, "region": [ "arctic" ], "facets": { "family": "stitch", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": -2000, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Suppressed by missionaries; revived deliberately from 2016" }, "practice": { "method": "stitch", "tool": "needle-and-sinew", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "hands", "arms", "thighs", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "CA", "GL", "US" ], "first_record": 1475, "first_record_note": "the Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland carry facial marks, dated about 1475", "break": [ 1920, 2016 ], "revived": 2016, "suppressed_by": "Christian missionaries and the residential school system", "note": "Women tattooing women. A threaded needle drawn under the skin, or a poked line." }, "text": { "what": "Inuit tattoos: women's work on women's skin, stitched with a sooted thread drawn under the skin, or poked.", "story": "The method is the rarest on this site. A needle carries a sinew thread blackened with soot and is drawn *through* the skin, leaving the pigment behind it in a line — sewing, with the line left in. The same hands did the sewing that kept people alive in a cold place.\n\nThe marks answered to Sedna, whose severed fingers became the sea animals: hand and arm tattoos refer to where her hands were cut. A woman without hand marks was refused the good afterlife; a woman without face marks went to the land of the crestfallen, where the smoke rises from her throat and her head hangs down.\n\nThen missionaries, the schools, and a century of silence. The revival is recent, documented and deliberate: Hovak Johnston's project began putting traditional marks back on Inuit women in 2016, learning the stitch from the elders who still remembered it." }, "text_th": { "what": "รอยสักของชาวอินูอิต ผู้หญิงสักให้ผู้หญิง ใช้เข็มร้อยด้ายชุบเขม่าลอดใต้ผิวหนัง หรือแทงเป็นจุด" }, "kin": [ { "to": "stitch", "as": "The method, and the only one on this site that uses thread.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "qilakitsoq", "as": "The oldest Inuit faces that survive, and they are marked.", "rel": "find" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "The clearest datable revival in the record.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Kakiniit", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakiniit" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit", "s:wp-inuit" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kakiniit" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "revival", "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "kakiniit/kakiniit-fmib-46504-tattooed-woman-of-st-lawrence-island.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:FMIB 46504 Tattooed Woman of St Lawrence Island.jpeg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/FMIB_46504_Tattooed_Woman_of_St_Lawrence_Island.jpeg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFMIB_46504_Tattooed_Woman_of_St_Lawrence_Island.jpeg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Raymond L. Newcomb", "credit": "Newcomb, Raymond Lee (1882) Our Lost Explorers : the Narrative of the Jeannette Arctic Expedition, as related by the survors, and in the records and last journals of Lieutenant De Long, Hartford", "alt": "Tattooed Woman of St. Lawrence Island\nSubject: Eskimo women--Alaska, Tattooing--Alaska\nTag: People", "date": "1882date QS:P571,+1882-00-00T00:00:00Z/9", "primary": true, "sha256": "fb53bd4bc9b40bb1d085e82c023cc5f7c5684cd4c5101a7f924a108b4200e5d4" }, { "file": "kakiniit/kakiniit-milukkattuk-36951.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Milukkattuk (36951).jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Milukkattuk_%2836951%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMilukkattuk_%2836951%29.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Diamond Jenness", "credit": "Canadian Museum of History", "alt": "Milukkattuk, Dolphin and Union Strait Inuk woman, wife of Avrunna (36926), front view with hood down, arm and hand extended showing tattooed hand, Bernard Harbour, N.W.T. (Nunavut).", "date": "July 1916date QS:P571,+1916-07-00T00:00:", "primary": false, "sha256": "05fa13542c43543e2191191741c62d9ecffae6c7dae03b5a111fab2da8d1bf58" } ], "geo": { "lat": 66.0, "lon": -85.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "stitch", "type": "method", "name": "Stitch", "as": "The tradition that carries it." }, { "from": "needle-and-sinew", "type": "tool", "name": "Needle and sinew", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "sedna-hands", "type": "motif", "name": "Sedna's hands", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "hovak-johnston", "type": "person", "name": "Hovak Johnston", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "revival", "type": "story", "name": "Stopped, and started again", "as": "And the best documented." }, { "from": "qilakitsoq", "type": "find", "name": "The Qilakitsoq women", "as": "The tradition." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kalinga-cordillera", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Cordilleran whatok", "local": "whatok", "local_lang": "Kalinga", "aliases": [ "fatek", "batok" ], "said": "The best-kept of the Philippine traditions, because the mountains were never taken" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1200, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Mummies from the 13th century carry it; Whang-od still taps it" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "tool": "gisi-pat-ik", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "chest", "hands", "back" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "PH" ], "first_record": 1200, "note": "Chest work for a man who had taken a head; arm work for everyone else." }, "text": { "what": "The Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, where Spanish rule never reached and the tattooing was never interrupted.", "story": "Cordilleran mummies in cave and hanging-coffin burials carry tattoos going back to the thirteenth century, individualised, covering an adult woman's arms and an adult man's whole body — and the coffins carry the patterns carved on the outside.\n\nHeadhunting chest work went first, when headhunting stopped. Arm and decorative work lasted longer. Elders among the Bontoc and Kalinga still carry it; among the Kankanaey, Apayao and Ibaloi it is believed gone." }, "text_th": { "what": "เทือกเขาคอร์ดิลเยราทางเหนือของลูซอน ที่สเปนไปไม่ถึง และการสักไม่เคยถูกตัดขาด" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "The wider Philippine family this sits inside.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "whang-od", "as": "The practitioner everyone has heard of.", "rel": "person" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Kalinga people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-kalinga-people", "s:wp-bontoc-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "revival" ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "Having no tattoos was formerly equated to being naked.", "lang": "English, of Cordilleran practice", "source": "s:wp-batok", "year": 2020, "garment": "clothes" }, "geo": { "lat": 17.38, "lon": 121.1, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "pintados", "type": "story", "name": "The painted ones", "as": "The mountains, where it did not happen." }, { "from": "cordilleran-mummies", "type": "find", "name": "The Cordilleran mummies", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "whose-designs", "type": "issue", "name": "Whose designs", "as": "Where the rule is stated plainly." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kayan-borneo", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Kayan tattooing", "local": "tedak", "local_lang": "Kayan", "said": "Women's forearms and thighs, worked over years" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1850, "to": 2000, "circa": true, "label": "Hose and McDougall describe the full sequence in 1912" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "thighs", "feet" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "MY", "ID" ], "first_record": 1912, "note": "Tattooed by women, for women, over several years and several sittings." }, "text": { "what": "Upriver Borneo, where the tattooists were women and the work went on a woman's forearms, thighs and feet across years.", "story": "Hose and McDougall set down the sequence, the fees and the taboos in 1912 — which is why a practice that thinned out is describable at all, and also why the description is an outsider's. The Kayan of Borneo are not the Kayan of Myanmar; the names collide and the peoples do not." }, "text_th": { "what": "บอร์เนียวตอนใน ช่างสักเป็นผู้หญิง สักให้ผู้หญิง ที่แขน ต้นขา และเท้า ใช้เวลาหลายปี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "Downriver, and mostly men's.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Kayan people (Borneo)", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayan_people_(Borneo)" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kayan-people-borneo", "s:hose-borneo-2" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:hose-borneo-2" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "colonial-record" ], "geo": { "lat": 2.8, "lon": 114.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "iban-borneo", "type": "tradition", "name": "Iban tattooing", "as": "Upriver, and mostly women's work." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "konyak-naga", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Konyak marks", "local": "Konyak", "local_lang": "Konyak", "said": "Face and chest, earned in the headhunting years" }, "region": [ "south-asia", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1800, "to": 1970, "circa": true, "label": "Ended with headhunting and conversion; the marked men are the last generation" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chest", "arms" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "IN", "MM" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1970, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "the end of headhunting, colonial administration and Christian conversion", "note": "A face mark that recorded an act, which is why it could not outlive the act." }, "text": { "what": "Nagaland and across the Myanmar border: chest and face marks a man received for taking a head.", "story": "*Inference —* a tattoo that certifies an act ends when the act ends. The Konyak marks, the Cordilleran chest work and the Iban hand tattoo are three unrelated traditions with the same structural weakness, and all three stopped within decades of headhunting being suppressed. A tattoo for beauty or for protection can survive a change of government. A tattoo that is a record cannot." }, "text_th": { "what": "นาคาแลนด์และข้ามพรมแดนพม่า ลายอกและใบหน้าที่ชายได้รับเมื่อได้หัวศัตรู" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "Same structure, different island: the chest is earned.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "And the hands.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Konyak Naga", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konyak_Naga" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-konyak-naga", "s:wp-naga-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-konyak-naga" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "initiation" ], "geo": { "lat": 26.4, "lon": 94.9, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "marquesan-patutiki", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Patutiki", "local": "patu tiki", "local_lang": "Marquesan", "said": "To strike the image" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Suppressed by mission and administration; documented by Handy in 1922, revived since the 1980s" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "whole-body", "face", "legs", "hands" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "PF" ], "first_record": 1922, "break": [ 1900, 1980 ], "revived": 1980, "suppressed_by": "French administration and Catholic mission", "note": "The densest body coverage recorded anywhere in the Pacific." }, "text": { "what": "The Marquesas: coverage so complete that Willowdean Handy's 1922 survey had to be drawn panel by panel to record it.", "story": "Handy's *Tattooing in the Marquesas* is a Bishop Museum bulletin, out of copyright, and it is a catalogue of motifs recorded when very few marked people were left. The name says the method: *patu tiki*, to strike the image." }, "text_th": { "what": "หมู่เกาะมาร์เคซัส ลายคลุมตัวหนาแน่นที่สุดเท่าที่บันทึกไว้ในแปซิฟิก" }, "links": [ { "label": "Marquesas Islands", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquesas_Islands" } ], "sources": [ "s:handy-marquesas", "s:wp-marquesas-islands" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:handy-marquesas" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "revival", "colonial-record" ], "geo": { "lat": -9.8, "lon": -139.05, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "mentawai-titi", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Mentawai titi", "local": "titi", "local_lang": "Mentawai", "said": "Lines following the body, put on across a life" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1850, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Still carried by elders on Siberut" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "chest", "back", "legs", "hands" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "ID" ], "first_record": 1900, "note": "Put on in stages through a life rather than in one commitment." }, "text": { "what": "The Mentawai islands, west of Sumatra: long lines laid along arms, chest and legs, added to at each stage of a life.", "story": "*Inference —* the Mentawai case is the clearest example of a pattern this site keeps meeting: a tradition is called dying for a century and is still there, thinner, with the elders carrying it and the state having spent decades discouraging it." }, "text_th": { "what": "หมู่เกาะเมินตาไว ตะวันตกของสุมาตรา เส้นยาวตามแขน อก และขา เพิ่มทีละช่วงของชีวิต" }, "links": [ { "label": "Mentawai people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentawai_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-mentawai-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-mentawai-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "mentawai-titi/mentawai-titi-sikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Sikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Sikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Andrian salis", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Portrait of a Sikerei (Mentawai shaman) displaying traditional full-body tattoos, Siberut Island.", "date": "2026-08-22", "primary": true, "sha256": "5dd17071a6ff5cb65af75022cad19772bb44b096d06c0d7e1647682baae560cc" }, { "file": "mentawai-titi/mentawai-titi-tato-mentawai.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Tato mentawai.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Tato_mentawai.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATato_mentawai.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Adhmi", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Sikerei sedang membuat tato mentawai", "date": "2021-12-20 19:59:11", "primary": false, "sha256": "1d68622c04c6defe4d4709d89bcdd528c8878e7e2282250190a5ad712a159f76" } ], "geo": { "lat": -1.4, "lon": 99.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Sak kha lai", "th": "สักขาลาย", "rtgs": "sak kha lai", "local": "ᩈᩢ᩠ᨠᨡᩣᩃᩣ᩠ᨿ", "local_lang": "Northern Thai (Tai Tham script)", "aliases": [ "lao phung dam", "ลาวพุงดำ", "the black-bellied Lao", "Lanna leg tattoo" ], "said": "sàk khǎa laai — to tattoo the legs in patterns" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 1930, "circa": true, "label": "Mural evidence from the 1800s; gone within a generation of electric light", "label_th": "หลักฐานจิตรกรรมจากคริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 19 หายไปภายในชั่วอายุคนหลังไฟฟ้าเข้าหมู่บ้าน" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "lek-char", "ink": "lampblack", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "waist-to-ankle", "belly", "back", "arms", "fingers" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "TH", "MM" ], "first_record": 1800, "first_record_note": "temple murals; the written description this site quotes was set down much later, from elders", "suppressed_by": "nobody banned it — the volume this site quotes blames electric light and the end of the night courtship it lit up", "sessions": "days for one pattern; months or years for a whole body", "note": "Northern Thai men, waist to knee or waist to ankle, in patterns dense enough that a mural paints them as trousers." }, "text": { "what": "The Lanna leg tattoo: waist to knee, sometimes to the ankle, dense enough that the murals paint it as a pair of black trousers.", "story": "A Lanna volume held in the wichaa.net manuscript corpus puts it plainly: temple murals show northern Thai men tattooed *จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ* — \"until it looked as if they wore black trousers.\" Elders quoted in the same passage give the extent: the legs in patterns from the waist down to the ankles, the torso front and back, the arms, even the fingers; some as far as the neck and the crown of the head.\n\nThe enforcement was talk. A man who did not tattoo his legs and torso \"would be gossiped about as being like a woman — lacking the endurance to bear the needle\"; if he had no marks he might as well put on a *sin*, the woman's wrapped skirt. The work went to a master in the community and the fee had a Lanna name of its own, **khan tang** (ขันตั้ง), where central Thai says *khan khru*.\n\n*Inference —* the tradition is described here in the past tense by its own inheritors, not by an outside authority, and nothing in the passage names a law. What it names is electric light: the old night courtship ended, the reason a young man needed to be looked at ended with it, and the marks went out of use within about a generation.", "today": "Sak kha lai is not what a visitor to Chiang Mai is offered. What is offered is **sak yant** — the same needle, a different job. The leg tattoo covered a man; the yant marks him with a formula.", "notes": "This site treats sak kha lai and sak yant as two traditions on one hand, not one tradition with two names. That separation is the client's correction, and it is the same separation the Burmese record makes between the thigh work and the charms." }, "text_th": { "what": "สักขาลาย ของล้านนา จากบั้นเอวลงไปถึงเข่า บางคนถึงข้อเท้า แน่นจนจิตรกรรมฝาผนังวาดออกมาเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงดำ", "story": "หนังสือล้านนาเล่มหนึ่งในคลังเอกสารของ wichaa.net เขียนไว้ตรงๆ ว่า จิตรกรรมฝาผนังแสดงให้เห็นชายชาวล้านนาสักยันต์ลงบนร่างกาย *จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ* ผู้เฒ่าในข้อความเดียวกันบอกขอบเขตไว้ว่า สักขาลายตั้งแต่บั้นเอวลงมาจนถึงข้อเท้า สักลำตัวทั้งหน้าและหลัง สักแขน แม้แต่นิ้วมือ บางคนถึงคอและกลางกระหม่อม\n\nสิ่งที่บังคับคือคำนินทา ชายที่ไม่สักขาและลำตัวจะถูกว่าเป็นผู้หญิงที่ไม่มีน้ำอดน้ำทนต่อเข็ม ถ้าไม่มีรอยสักเลยก็ให้ไปนุ่งซิ่นเสีย งานนี้ต้องไปหาครูบาอาจารย์ในชุมชน และค่าครูมีชื่อล้านนาของตัวเองว่า **ขันตั้ง** ซึ่งภาคกลางเรียกขันครู\n\n*อนุมาน —* ข้อความนี้เล่าธรรมเนียมของตัวเองด้วยกาลอดีต ไม่ใช่คนนอกเป็นคนเล่า และไม่มีกฎหมายข้อใดถูกเอ่ยถึง สิ่งที่ถูกเอ่ยถึงคือไฟฟ้า ประเพณีแอ่วสาวยามค่ำจบลง เหตุผลที่ชายหนุ่มต้องถูกมองก็จบตาม และรอยสักเลิกใช้ภายในราวชั่วอายุคน", "today": "สักขาลายไม่ใช่สิ่งที่นักเดินทางในเชียงใหม่จะได้รับการเสนอ สิ่งที่เสนอคือ **สักยันต์** เข็มเดียวกัน คนละงาน ลายขาคลุมทั้งตัวคน ส่วนยันต์ทำเครื่องหมายด้วยสูตร" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border west. The Burmese work is the better recorded of the two.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "And the same again to the north, where the tattooers of charms came from.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "The other job the same needle does, and the one still being done.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "khan-tang", "as": "The fee, in the Lanna word for it.", "rel": "rite" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "One of the three traditions whose own sources call the tattoo clothing.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "lek-char", "as": "The instrument.", "rel": "tool" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Lan Na", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lan_Na" } ], "sources": [ "s:ms6968", "s:corpus", "s:thwp-ล-านนา", "s:milne-shans" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "practice.suppressed_by": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "text.notes": { "tier": "inference", "note": "this project's separation of the two traditions" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here", "script", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "sak-kha-lai/sak-kha-lai-2013-wat-phumin-mural-02.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:2013 Wat Phumin mural 02.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/2013_Wat_Phumin_mural_02.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A2013_Wat_Phumin_mural_02.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "author": "Takeaway", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Murals of Wat Phumin", "date": "2013-12-11 09:38:31", "primary": true, "sha256": "b2cd08a5f7ef9ab3db421f5cdfaf0d6d987cf7b24833fc6c7bed7f019abc8fe1" }, { "file": "sak-kha-lai/sak-kha-lai-peinture-murale-wat-phumin2-nan.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Peinture murale Wat Phumin2, Nan.JPG", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Peinture_murale_Wat_Phumin2%2C_Nan.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APeinture_murale_Wat_Phumin2%2C_Nan.JPG", "license": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "author": "Ellnik", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Peinture_murale_Wat_Phumin2,_Nan.JPG", "date": "11 may", "primary": false, "sha256": "006ec453a4d1505e37bbc54eef740d6dc291ae8a17c8a06780c9fafc95402e1e" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ — until it looked as if they wore black trousers", "lang": "Northern Thai", "source": "s:ms6968", "year": 2010, "garment": "trousers" }, "geo": { "lat": 18.79, "lon": 99.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border east, and far less written down." }, { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "The other job of the same needle, and the one that stopped." }, { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "The same work on the Thai side of the line." }, { "from": "lek-char", "type": "tool", "name": "Lek char", "as": "What it made." }, { "from": "khan-tang", "type": "rite", "name": "Khan tang", "as": "The tradition that names it this way." }, { "from": "chiang-mai", "type": "place", "name": "Chiang Mai", "as": "What was ordinary here." }, { "from": "wat-phumin", "type": "place", "name": "Wat Phumin", "as": "What it shows." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Black trousers." }, { "from": "coverage", "type": "story", "name": "Who gets written about", "as": "The tradition with no article at all." }, { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "The Thai side." }, { "from": "revival", "type": "story", "name": "Stopped, and started again", "as": "And the one with nobody left to ask." }, { "from": "murals", "type": "art", "name": "The murals", "as": "What it shows." }, { "from": "wichaa", "type": "org", "name": "wichaa.net", "as": "What the corpus was asked about." }, { "from": "who-wrote-it-down", "type": "issue", "name": "Who wrote it down", "as": "And the counter-case." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Sak yant", "th": "สักยันต์", "rtgs": "sak yant", "local": "សាក់យ័ន្ត", "local_lang": "Khmer", "aliases": [ "yantra tattooing", "สักยันต์" ], "said": "sàk yan — to prick a diagram" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia", "lanna" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1400, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Living, and the one tradition on this site a visitor can walk into" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "khem-sak", "ink": "lampblack", "placement": [ "back", "chest", "arms", "neck", "legs" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "living", "countries": [ "TH", "KH", "LA", "MM" ], "first_record": 1600, "first_record_note": "the designs are older than any dated description this site can name", "sessions": "one design in a sitting; an ajarn or a monk, not a shop", "note": "A formula in letters and figures, laid on the skin, held by rules the bearer keeps afterwards." }, "text": { "what": "Letters, numbers and figures arranged into a diagram — *yant* — and pricked into skin with a long needle.", "story": "*Sak* is the verb: to prick. The Khmer root *cɔkʔ* means the same, and the Khmer dictionary keeps the word native rather than borrowed from Sanskrit. *Yant* is the diagram — the same word as Sanskrit *yantra*, the same family as the yantra drawn on cloth, on brass, on paper.\n\nThe Lanna volume explains why it moved to skin at all, and the reason is logistics: a yant on paper or metal is left at home. A yant on the body is carried. Everything else — which formula, which animal, which direction the letters run — follows from that one decision.\n\nTwo corrections this site carries, both from the client and both checkable. **Most sak yant is not done at Wat Bang Phra.** That temple is what the film crews know; the ordinary route is an ajarn or a monk near where you live. And **Khom is not \"what a yant is written in.\"** Khom script is the central Thai convention. In the north the letters are northern Thai — *tua mueang*, the Tai Tham script — or Shan, or Tai Lue.", "today": "Chiang Mai has working masters, and one operation there publishes the lineage of every one of them — who taught whom, which temple, how many years in the robe and how many out. That published lineage is the closest thing this site has to a family tree for a living hand tradition.", "notes": "The designs themselves are indexed on wichaa.net at /yant: 36 named designs across 63 plates, entered by what each one is for." }, "text_th": { "what": "ตัวอักษร ตัวเลข และรูปสัตว์ จัดเป็นแผนผัง — ยันต์ — แล้วแทงลงผิวหนังด้วยเข็มยาว", "story": "*สัก* คือคำกริยา แปลว่าแทง รากคำเขมร *cɔkʔ* ก็แปลอย่างเดียวกัน และพจนานุกรมเขมรถือว่าเป็นคำพื้นเมือง ไม่ได้ยืมจากสันสกฤต ส่วน *ยันต์* คือแผนผัง คำเดียวกับ yantra ในสันสกฤต ตระกูลเดียวกับยันต์ที่เขียนบนผ้า ทองเหลือง และกระดาษ\n\nหนังสือล้านนาอธิบายว่าทำไมจึงย้ายมาอยู่บนผิวหนัง เหตุผลคือการพกพา ยันต์บนกระดาษหรือแผ่นโลหะถูกลืมไว้ที่บ้านได้ ยันต์บนตัวไปด้วยเสมอ\n\nข้อแก้สองข้อที่เว็บนี้ถือไว้ **สักยันต์ส่วนใหญ่ไม่ได้ทำที่วัดบางพระ** วัดนั้นคือวัดที่กองถ่ายรู้จัก ทางปกติคืออาจารย์หรือพระใกล้บ้าน และ **ขอมไม่ใช่ \"อักษรที่ยันต์ต้องเขียน\"** อักษรขอมเป็นธรรมเนียมภาคกลาง ทางเหนือใช้ตัวเมือง อักษรไทใหญ่ หรือไทลื้อ", "today": "เชียงใหม่มีอาจารย์ที่ยังทำงานอยู่ และมีสำนักหนึ่งเผยแพร่สายครูของทุกคนไว้ ใครเรียนกับใคร วัดไหน บวชกี่พรรษาและสึกมากี่ปี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The other job of the same needle, and the one that stopped.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "khem-sak", "as": "The needle itself.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "khan-tang", "as": "The fee, north and centre.", "rel": "rite" }, { "to": "kho-ham", "as": "The rules that come with it, and what happens if they are broken.", "rel": "rite" }, { "to": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "as": "The published lineage.", "rel": "org" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "Where Shway Yoe says the charm specialists came from.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Yantra tattooing", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yantra_tattooing" }, { "label": "The yant designs, indexed on wichaa.net", "url": "https://wichaa.net/yant/" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-yantra-tattooing", "s:ms6968", "s:sycm", "s:thwp-การส-กย-นต-" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "text.today": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:sycm" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here", "protective", "script" ], "images": [ { "file": "sak-yant/sak-yant-sak-yant-gow-yord.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Sak-yant-gow-yord.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Sak-yant-gow-yord.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASak-yant-gow-yord.jpg", "license": "CC BY 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/", "author": "Mikhailovich", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Typical \"sak yant gow yord\" tattoo for use on Wikipedia's Yantra tattooing article", "date": "2011-02-26", "primary": true, "sha256": "f9a3631953f9b4f14fb58e0ff3255f12316ad551a37e2685fa6fd06509c1c1e4" }, { "file": "sak-yant/sak-yant-sak-yant-chiang-mai.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Sak Yant Chiang Mai.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Sak_Yant_Chiang_Mai.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASak_Yant_Chiang_Mai.jpg", "license": "CC BY 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "author": "Immanuelle", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Sak Yant Chiang Mai", "date": "2024-08-26 23:58:50", "primary": false, "sha256": "7bda912fb9ccae7bab713ff3b204aad1df8e5fba20a9c56759576913beabc95b" }, { "file": "sak-yant/sak-yant-thai-tattoos-1.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Thai tattoos 1.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Thai_tattoos_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThai_tattoos_1.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Love Krittaya", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Thai tattoos (สักยันต์)", "date": "2004-08-28 12:28:45", "primary": false, "sha256": "599860b0f644ccedf9cb337c0e3faa1b8a6d1421324cf63fe7947b8d1aa3459c" } ], "geo": { "lat": 14.5, "lon": 100.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "The other job the same needle does, and the one still being done." }, { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "What the Shan specialists were carrying when they crossed." }, { "from": "khem-sak", "type": "tool", "name": "Khem sak", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "hanuman", "type": "motif", "name": "Hanuman", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "mystic-square", "type": "motif", "name": "The lettered square", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "khan-tang", "type": "rite", "name": "Khan tang", "as": "And the living one that still collects it." }, { "from": "kho-ham", "type": "rite", "name": "The rules", "as": "Where the rules attach." }, { "from": "ajarn-dang-sak", "type": "person", "name": "Ajarn Dang and Ajarn Sak", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "chiang-mai", "type": "place", "name": "Chiang Mai", "as": "What is still done here." }, { "from": "stencils", "type": "art", "name": "The stencil book", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "type": "org", "name": "Sak Yant Chiang Mai", "as": "The tradition." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "th": "การสักของไทใหญ่", "local": "တႆး", "local_lang": "Shan", "aliases": [ "Tai Yai tattooing" ], "said": "Both legs, waist to knee, and further than the Burmese" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1300, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Chinese annals notice Shans tattooing their foreheads; Milne describes the leg work in 1910" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "lampblack", "tool": "hnitkwasok", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "waist-to-ankle", "back", "arms", "face" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "MM", "TH", "CN" ], "first_record": 1910, "first_record_note": "Leslie Milne, Shans at Home; the Gazetteer carries an older Chinese notice", "sessions": "begun at twelve to fourteen", "note": "A Shan boy counted as a child until he was tattooed." }, "text": { "what": "The same leg work as the Burmese, carried further — to the ankles, up the back, and on the specialists who tattooed everybody else's charms.", "story": "Leslie Milne lived among the northern Shan and published *Shans at Home* in 1910. Her sentence on status is the whole of it: **a Shan boy is a child until he is tattooed.** Plucky boys start at twelve, most wait until fourteen. The rule is both legs, waist to knee, the thighs completely covered in dark blue — and often on to the ankles. Backs come later, in blue or more often red, and without symmetry: a grid of lettered squares under one shoulder blade, small circles or beasts on the other side.\n\nShway Yoe, writing thirty years earlier, says the Shans tattoo more extensively than the Burmese, with rays running up from the waistline to the chest and nearly to the nape, and that the retainers of a *sawbwa* — a Shan chief — might be marked everywhere but the palms and the soles.\n\nThe second thing he says is the one that matters for the whole region: **the men who tattoo charms and cabalistic figures are mostly Shans.** They are credited with the special skill, they mutter the spells over the medicine, and they are held in some awe for it. The Lanna volume agrees from the other side of the border: this fashion was widespread among the Burmese and the Tai Yai, who tattoo yantras no less than the Lanna do.", "today": "Tai Yai communities span the Myanmar–Thailand border, including Mae Hong Son. This site has no count of who is still tattooed and does not guess at one." }, "text_th": { "what": "งานสักขาแบบเดียวกับพม่า แต่ไปไกลกว่า ถึงข้อเท้า ขึ้นหลัง และอยู่บนตัวช่างผู้สักเครื่องรางให้คนอื่นทั้งภูมิภาค", "story": "เลสลี มิลน์ อยู่กับชาวไทใหญ่ทางเหนือและพิมพ์ *Shans at Home* ในปี 1910 ประโยคเรื่องสถานะของเธอคือทั้งหมดของเรื่อง **เด็กชายไทใหญ่ยังเป็นเด็กจนกว่าจะได้สัก** คนใจกล้าเริ่มตอนสิบสอง ส่วนใหญ่รอถึงสิบสี่ กติกาคือสองขา ตั้งแต่เอวถึงเข่า ต้นขาเต็มไปด้วยลายสีน้ำเงินเข้ม และบ่อยครั้งลงไปถึงข้อเท้า\n\nเชวโยซึ่งเขียนก่อนหน้านั้นสามสิบปีบอกว่าไทใหญ่สักมากกว่าพม่า มีรัศมีพุ่งจากแนวเอวขึ้นหน้าอกและเกือบถึงท้ายทอย และบริวารของเจ้าฟ้าอาจถูกสักทุกส่วนยกเว้นฝ่ามือกับฝ่าเท้า\n\nสิ่งที่เขาพูดต่อสำคัญต่อทั้งภูมิภาค **ช่างที่สักยันต์และอักขระส่วนใหญ่เป็นไทใหญ่** เอกสารล้านนาก็พูดตรงกันจากอีกฝั่งของพรมแดน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "Who they learned it from, if Milne is right — and she hedges.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The same work on the Thai side of the line.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "What the Shan specialists were carrying when they crossed.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "milne-shans", "as": "Who wrote it down, and stayed long enough to quote the boys' friends.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "legs", "as": "The zone this belongs to, and where its border runs.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Shan people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:milne-shans", "s:shway-yoe", "s:gazetteer-2", "s:ms6968" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:milne-shans" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "colonial-record", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "shan-tattooing/shan-tattooing-shan-man-in-gaung-baung.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Shan man in gaung baung.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Shan_man_in_gaung_baung.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShan_man_in_gaung_baung.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 2.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/", "author": "Damien Halleux Radermecker from Brussels, Belgium", "credit": "Shan Colors", "alt": "Shan man in Myanmar wearing a gaung baung (turban)", "date": "2010-02-03 14:32", "primary": true, "sha256": "43cc1a453125e2f824ddf36907c2d158d21a0da1aac8b3cc9f9373aacb93e5bb" } ], "geo": { "lat": 21.29, "lon": 99.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "Who Shway Yoe says did the charm work, and did more of it." }, { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "And the same again to the north, where the tattooers of charms came from." }, { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "Where Shway Yoe says the charm specialists came from." }, { "from": "the-pain", "type": "rite", "name": "Bearing it", "as": "Where the friends do." }, { "from": "ajarn-dang-sak", "type": "person", "name": "Ajarn Dang and Ajarn Sak", "as": "The line they name." }, { "from": "milne-shans", "type": "person", "name": "Leslie Milne", "as": "What she described." }, { "from": "kengtung", "type": "place", "name": "Kengtung", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "The middle." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sicanje", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Sicanje", "local": "sicanje", "local_lang": "Croatian", "aliases": [ "bocanje", "bockanje" ], "said": "sicanje — pricking; crosses and circles on the forearms and chest" }, "region": [ "europe" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 1945, "circa": true, "label": "Died out after the Second World War; the designs are being used again by machine" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-honey", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "BA", "HR" ], "first_record": 1894, "first_record_note": "Leopold Glück's 1894 paper in Vienna; Ćiro Truhelka illustrated the designs in the same decade", "break": [ 1945, 2026 ], "note": "Catholic Croats in central Bosnia; the marks went on girls, and sometimes boys, around puberty." }, "text": { "what": "Bosnia: Catholic girls' forearms and hands marked with crosses, circles and fences, pricked with soot and honey.", "story": "Two nineteenth-century observers recorded it — the archaeologist Ćiro Truhelka, who drew the designs, and a doctor, Leopold Glück, who published a paper in Vienna in 1894 titled *The Tattooing of Skin Among the Catholics of Bosnia and Herzegovina*.\n\nThe custom went out after the Second World War. What survives is the design vocabulary, now being applied by machine by tattooists in Croatia and Bosnia — a revival of the pattern without the practice, which is a distinct thing and this site counts it separately." }, "text_th": { "what": "บอสเนีย เด็กหญิงคาทอลิกถูกสักไม้กางเขนและวงกลมที่แขนและมือ ด้วยเขม่าผสมน้ำผึ้ง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "coptic-pilgrim", "as": "The other Christian hand-poke tradition on this site.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "who-wrote-it-down", "as": "Recorded by a doctor and an archaeologist, which is the usual pair.", "rel": "issue" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Sicanje", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicanje" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-sicanje", "s:wp-croats-of-bosnia-and-herzegovina" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-sicanje" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "colonial-record" ], "images": [ { "file": "sicanje/sicanje-bh-croats-tattoo.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:BH Croats, Tattoo.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/BH_Croats%2C_Tattoo.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABH_Croats%2C_Tattoo.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Mostarac", "credit": "https://www.croatianhistory.net/gif/tattoo1.jpg", "alt": "Tattoos of Cross on Croatian women in Bosnia and Herzegovina were defence from Ottoman Turks", "date": "starije od 70 godina / older then 70 yea", "primary": true, "sha256": "d7a6f855b9fa0cf0e5047c0f7c23fe50d46537af5312f343f32901d407ee9b22" }, { "file": "sicanje/sicanje-frau-aus-dem-lasvatale.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Frau aus dem Lasvatale.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Frau_aus_dem_Lasvatale.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFrau_aus_dem_Lasvatale.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "R. Kofzmann", "credit": "III: Band; Mann und Weib in ihren Beziehungen zur Kultur der Gegenwart. page 455.", "alt": "nach \"Mitteilungen aus Bosnien und der Herzegowina\"\nFrau aus dem Lasvatale.", "date": "1910", "primary": false, "sha256": "42fb74b361b6e519212578e01914f94789367bd0440eafad774abe376ce118a0" } ], "geo": { "lat": 44.0, "lon": 17.7, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "coptic-pilgrim", "type": "tradition", "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "as": "Christian marks made by pricking, at the other end of the Mediterranean." }, { "from": "soot-honey", "type": "ink", "name": "Soot and honey", "as": "Where it goes." }, { "from": "truhelka-gluck", "type": "person", "name": "Truhelka and Glück", "as": "What they recorded." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "stick-and-poke", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Stick and poke", "aliases": [ "hand-poke", "handpoke", "prison tattoo" ], "said": "A needle, a thread of pigment, and no machine" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1970, "to": 2026, "label": "The contemporary hand-poke scene, and its prison ancestor" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "pen-ink", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "legs", "chest" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "either", "status": "living", "countries": [ "US", "GB", "DE", "FR", "JP", "TH", "AU", "CA" ], "first_record": 1970, "note": "A sewing needle with thread wound round it, or a professional cartridge held in a stabiliser pen." }, "text": { "what": "The one everybody has seen: a needle, ink, no machine — punk kitchens, prisons, and now studios that do nothing else.", "story": "Two lineages meet here and they are not the same thing. One is improvised: a sewing needle or a safety pin, ballpoint ink, done by a friend, associated with prisons and with people too young to be tattooed legally. The other is professional hand-poke, done with medical needles in a studio, which is now a standing style with its own practitioners.\n\n*Inference —* this site lists it as a tradition because it is one, and because the same word covers both ends of it. The difference between the two is not the method; it is whether the needle is sterile and whether the person holding it has been taught." }, "text_th": { "what": "แบบที่ทุกคนเคยเห็น เข็ม หมึก ไม่มีเครื่อง ทั้งในครัวพังก์ ในเรือนจำ และในร้านที่ทำแต่แบบนี้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "machine", "as": "What it is defined against.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "what-counts", "as": "And the question that gets asked about it.", "rel": "issue" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Stick and poke", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stick_and_poke" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-stick-and-poke", "s:wp-prison-tattooing", "s:wp-russian-criminal-tattoos" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-stick-and-poke" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "stick-and-poke/stick-and-poke-404-sak-yant-tattoo-16.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:404 Sak Yant Tattoo (16).jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/404_Sak_Yant_Tattoo_%2816%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A404_Sak_Yant_Tattoo_%2816%29.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Lychiang", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "404 Sak Yant Tattoo (16)", "date": "2006-04-29 15:50:54", "primary": true, "sha256": "f2da4554196e68afdf20c6aa8d5691b4b81d6a924fcbce6a851da7c2c70255dc" } ], "geo": { "lat": 51.5, "lon": -0.12, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "pen-ink", "type": "ink", "name": "Pen ink", "as": "Where it goes." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "ta-moko", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Tā moko", "local": "tā moko", "local_lang": "Māori", "aliases": [ "moko kauae", "pūkauae" ], "said": "Carved with a chisel, leaving a groove rather than a smooth surface" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "cut", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Men's moko stopped about 1860; women's continued; revived from 1990" }, "practice": { "method": "cut", "tool": "uhi", "ink": "awheto-ngarehu", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "thighs", "buttocks" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "NZ" ], "first_record": 1769, "break": [ 1907, 1990 ], "revived": 1990, "suppressed_by": "the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907, and the trade in tattooed heads before it", "note": "An albatross-bone chisel struck with a mallet; the skin is grooved, not punctured." }, "text": { "what": "New Zealand: albatross-bone chisels struck with a mallet, cutting a groove that stays visible as texture, not only as colour.", "story": "*Tā moko* is not a puncture. The *uhi* — a hafted chisel of albatross bone — is struck, and the skin keeps the furrow. That is why a moko reads in raking light and why a photograph flattens it.\n\nPigment: *awheto*, a caterpillar fungus, for the body; *ngarehu*, burnt timber, for the darker face colour; soot from burnt kauri gum mixed with fat. It was kept in carved vessels called *oko* which were buried between uses and handed down.\n\nSteel needles arrived with Europeans and were faster and safer, and the groove went. Men's moko had largely stopped by the 1860s; women kept receiving *moko kauae* into the twentieth century, and Michael King interviewed more than seventy women in the early 1970s who had been marked before the Tohunga Suppression Act of 1907. Since 1990 the practice has come back, machine mostly, chisel too, with women among the practitioners — and a Māori foreign minister and a prime-time news anchor wearing *moko kauae* on the country's screens." }, "text_th": { "what": "นิวซีแลนด์ สิ่วกระดูกนกอัลบาทรอสตอกด้วยค้อน ทิ้งร่องไว้บนผิวหนัง ไม่ใช่เพียงสี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "uhi", "as": "The chisel.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "cut", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "tatau", "as": "The neighbouring Pacific tradition that taps instead of cutting.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Tā moko", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%81_moko" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko", "s:wp-m-ori-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "revival", "women", "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "ta-moko/ta-moko-thigh-moko.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Thigh moko.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Thigh_moko.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThigh_moko.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Unknown authorUnknown author", "credit": "Moko; or, Maori Tattooing by Horatio Gordon Robley, 1896", "alt": "Image depicting a Māori tattoo or moko on someone’s thigh and buttock", "date": "1896-01-01", "primary": true, "sha256": "bcbe57cdcb7ef524d122d8de25a88c48db3b8754f91588b04676f2d5168be81d" }, { "file": "ta-moko/ta-moko-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work-gottfried-lindauer.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Tohunga-ta-moko at Work – Gottfried Lindauer.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Tohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Gottfried Lindauer", "credit": "https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/323/the-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work", "alt": "The Tohunga-ta-moko at Work. Painting by Gottfried Lindauer of Māori tattoo (moko) being carved into a man’s face by a skilled tattooist (tohunga-tā-moko).", "date": "Unknown date", "primary": false, "sha256": "f677deb89a4db4b11dd9585f5ee54024649249bda10347be26ce65b58ae368a1" } ], "geo": { "lat": -38.5, "lon": 176.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "cut", "type": "method", "name": "Cut", "as": "The tradition built on it." }, { "from": "uhi", "type": "tool", "name": "Uhi", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "awheto-ngarehu", "type": "ink", "name": "Awheto and ngarehu", "as": "Where it goes." }, { "from": "moko-kauae", "type": "motif", "name": "Moko kauae", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "tohunga-act", "type": "story", "name": "The Tohunga Suppression Act", "as": "What it caught." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "tatau", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Tatau", "local": "tatau", "local_lang": "Samoan", "aliases": [ "pe'a", "malu" ], "said": "The word English borrowed, by way of Cook's crew" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": -1000, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Unbroken: the two tufuga families hold the titles still" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "tool": "au", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "back", "thighs" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "kin", "status": "living", "countries": [ "WS", "AS", "TO", "FJ" ], "first_record": 1787, "sessions": "days, in several sittings, with assistants stretching the skin", "note": "The pe'a covers a man from mid-back to the knees; the malu is the women's." }, "text": { "what": "Samoa: a comb of bone and turtle shell, struck with a mallet, covering a man from the middle of the back to the knees.", "story": "The English word *tattoo* comes from this word. The *tufuga tā tatau* works with two assistants, the *'au toso*, who stretch the skin and wipe; the titles are hereditary in two families, the Sa Su'a of Savai'i and the Sa Tulou'ena of Upolu, and Samoan masters tattooed Tongan and Fijian chiefly families too.\n\nThe clothing logic is explicit here as well: an untattooed Samoan man is *telefua* or *telenoa* — naked. A man who starts the *pe'a* and cannot finish carries *pe'a mutu*, an unfinished tattoo, and that is a mark of shame that the finished work is designed to prevent.\n\nSamoa credits Fiji with the origin, in a song about twin sisters who swam across with a basket of tools, singing that only women should be tattooed — and arrived singing the opposite." }, "text_th": { "what": "ซามัว หวีกระดูกและกระดองเต่าตอกด้วยค้อน คลุมชายตั้งแต่กลางหลังถึงเข่า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "au", "as": "The comb.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "veiqia", "as": "Fiji, where Samoa says it came from — and where only women were marked.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "An untattooed man is called naked. In the language, not in a metaphor.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "cook-1769", "as": "How the word got into English.", "rel": "story" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Pe'a", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe%CA%BBa" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-pe-a", "s:turner-samoa" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "tatau/tatau-back-view-samoan-male-tatau-photo-thomas-andrew-1890s.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Back view Samoan male tatau - photo Thomas Andrew - 1890s.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Back_view_Samoan_male_tatau_-_photo_Thomas_Andrew_-_1890s.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABack_view_Samoan_male_tatau_-_photo_Thomas_Andrew_-_1890s.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Thomas Andrew (1855 - 1939)", "credit": "National Library of New Zealand", "alt": "Back view of Samoan male with traditional tattoo (tatau, pe'a).", "date": "circa 1890sdate QS:P,+1890-00-00T00:00:0", "primary": true, "sha256": "c9309b2095a7d0092d3962b210dfcde2df69d6143b4a97920cd35c369b72c83d" }, { "file": "tatau/tatau-samoan-malu.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Samoan Malu.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Samoan_Malu.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASamoan_Malu.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 2.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/", "author": "RunningToddler", "credit": "Bits & Bytes", "alt": "Самоанская женщина с традиционной малу", "date": "2005-11-26 18:23", "primary": false, "sha256": "4b6ef2734088b84b16eafb171afee2c777459884068ff840fd3efbe67a65012c" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "Untattooed Samoan males are colloquially referred to as telefua or telenoa, literally \"naked\".", "lang": "Samoan", "source": "s:wp-pe-a", "year": 2020, "garment": "clothes" }, "geo": { "lat": -13.8, "lon": -172.1, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "ta-moko", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tā moko", "as": "The neighbouring Pacific tradition that taps instead of cutting." }, { "from": "veiqia", "type": "tradition", "name": "Veiqia", "as": "Where Samoa says the tools came from." }, { "from": "au", "type": "tool", "name": "Au", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "the-pain", "type": "rite", "name": "Bearing it", "as": "And where stopping has a name." }, { "from": "who-holds-you", "type": "rite", "name": "Who holds you still", "as": "Where the assistants have a title." }, { "from": "sulu-ape", "type": "person", "name": "The Sulu'ape line", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Naked, in the ordinary word." }, { "from": "cook-1769", "type": "story", "name": "How the word got in", "as": "The word." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "veiqia", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Veiqia", "local": "veiqia", "local_lang": "Fijian", "aliases": [ "weniqia" ], "said": "A woman's marks, by a woman called the dauveiqia" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1700, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "One tattooist left by 1908; revived by an artists' collective in the 2010s" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "thighs", "waist-to-knee" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "FJ" ], "first_record": 1830, "break": [ 1910, 2015 ], "revived": 2015, "suppressed_by": "Christian missionaries from the 1830s", "note": "Older women held the expertise; the fee was tapa cloth, whale teeth or a liku skirt." }, "text": { "what": "Fiji: girls marked at puberty by older women called *dauveiqia*, paid in tapa cloth and whale teeth.", "story": "By 1908 there was one recorded practitioner left — a woman called Rabali, tattooing until about 1910. That is as close as this site gets to a date for the end of a tradition, and it comes with a name.\n\nThe revival is as precisely dated. The Veiqia Project, a collective of Fijian women artists, took the practice up from the archives and the objects in the 2010s. Samoa's own origin story sends the tatau across from Fiji, which makes the revived practice older than the one that borrowed it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ฟิจิ หญิงสาวถูกสักเมื่อเข้าวัยสาวโดยหญิงอาวุโสที่เรียกว่า dauveiqia ค่าจ้างเป็นผ้าตาปาและฟันวาฬ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tatau", "as": "Where Samoa says the tools came from.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "The best-dated stop and restart on the site.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Veiqia", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veiqia" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-veiqia", "s:wp-fiji" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-veiqia" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "revival" ], "geo": { "lat": -17.8, "lon": 178.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "tatau", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tatau", "as": "Fiji, where Samoa says it came from — and where only women were marked." }, { "from": "who-holds-you", "type": "rite", "name": "Who holds you still", "as": "And where the holders are the other women." }, { "from": "rabali", "type": "person", "name": "Rabali", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "revival", "type": "story", "name": "Stopped, and started again", "as": "The clearest one." }, { "from": "veiqia-project", "type": "org", "name": "The Veiqia Project", "as": "The practice." } ] } ] }