traditionHajichi
針突 · Okinawan
hajichi — the needle-struck marks on a woman's hands
| Where it goes | hands, fingers, arms |
|---|---|
| Stopped by | prohibited by the Japanese government in 1899 as part of the assimilation of the Ryukyus |
| Notes | Backs of the hands and the fingers; marks added at betrothal and marriage. |
| Ink | Soot and water |
| Years between | 1899–2015 (116) |
about 1,600 – 2,026 · Banned by Japan in 1899; taken up again by Okinawan women in the 2010s
26.3400, 127.8000 · OpenStreetMap
What it is
The Ryukyu Islands: marks on the backs of women's hands, outlawed by Japan in 1899 and now being put back on.
The long version
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.
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.
Connected to
- Irezumi Banned by the same state, twenty-seven years apart.
- Stopped, and started again On the revival list.
Named here by
- Where the marks go The hands, and the 1899 prohibition.
- Japan outlaws it And who else.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | tradition | ||
| practice.break | tradition | the 1899 prohibition is widely reported; this site has not seen the instrument itself | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
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