The tattoo is clothing
Sources in Burmese, Northern Thai, Spanish and Samoan — and a Cordilleran rule recorded in English — reach for the same comparison: the tattoo is not on the body, it is what the body wears.
| Tradition | Said in | The comparison | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Batok | Spanish, of Visayan work | “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” | Batok — Wikipedia (en) |
| Htoe kwin | English, of Burmese work | “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” | The Burman: His Life and Notions — scanned by the Internet Archive |
| Sak kha lai | Northern Thai | “จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ — until it looked as if they wore black trousers” | อภิมหามนต์คาถา (Supreme Maha Mantra Katha), pp. 19–21 — held and digitised in the wichaa.net manuscript corpus, item 6968 |
| Cordilleran whatok | English, of Cordilleran practice | “Having no tattoos was formerly equated to being naked.” | Batok — Wikipedia (en) |
| Tatau | Samoan | “Untattooed Samoan males are colloquially referred to as telefua or telenoa, literally "naked".” | Peʻa — Wikipedia (en) |
Shway Yoe, Burma, 1882, on the finished htoe kwin: the effect is "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."
A Lanna volume, northern Thailand, describing the same region's work from its own side: men tattooed their bodies จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ — "until it looked as if they wore black trousers" — and a man with no marks should put on a woman's skirt instead.
A Spanish account of the Visayans: a naked tattooed man "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."
The Cordillerans: having no tattoos was equated to being naked. The Samoans: an untattooed man is telefua or telenoa — naked, in the ordinary word, not as a figure of speech.
Inference — this is the one comparison that survives translation everywhere on this map, and it is doing work. A garment is the thing that makes a person presentable in public; it is put on at a particular age; its absence is shameful rather than merely unusual; and it is the first thing another person reads. Every one of those is also true of the marks. Where a tradition covers a whole zone of the body, its own sources describe that zone as dressed.
And what follows from it
Zones that can be covered — thighs, back, chest, waist-to-knee — belong to traditions where the tattoo is a garment and the wearer chooses when it is seen. Zones that cannot — face, chin, hands, fingers — belong to traditions where the mark is an identification, and where a state that wanted the practice stopped could enforce the ban by looking at people.
Inference — the second group is where the bans land. Chin faces, Atayal faces, Okinawan hands, Ainu mouths, Māori chins. The leg traditions were not banned; they faded. A mark you cannot hide is easy to police, and a mark under a longyi is not worth the trouble.