traditionAinu anchi-piri
アンチピリ · Ainu
anchi-piri — the obsidian cut; a woman's mouth, widening for years
Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain| Where it goes | face, arms, hands |
|---|---|
| Stopped by | prohibited under Japanese administration in the nineteenth century |
| Notes | Begun between five and thirteen, enlarged until marriage. |
| Ink | Indigo |
| Years between | 1900–2026 (126) |
about 1,600 – 1,900 · Prohibited under Japanese rule; the last tattooed women died in the twentieth century
43.3000, 142.8000 · OpenStreetMap
What it is
Hokkaido and Sakhalin: a woman's mouth ringed with indigo, begun in childhood and widened until she was ready to marry.
The long version
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.
The 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.
Connected to
- Cut The method — a cut rubbed with pigment, not a puncture.
- Irezumi The other Japanese tradition, and the one the word usually means.
Named here by
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Ainu people — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Ainu people — Wikipedia (en)
- Irezumi — Wikipedia (en)
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there