At a small, clinically-lit studio in Tokyo’s Roppongi district, fearsome warriors and mythical creatures glare out from paper drawings lining the perimeter of the space. The tattooist here, who asked ...

While plenty of tattooers struggle to find a solid unique style using a machine, some of the most advanced artists in the world are focused on tattooing techniques that predated modern coil and rotary ...

Japan's tattoo artists have existed in a legal gray area since 2001, when the country's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare decreed that any action that involves putting "pigment on a needle tip ...

From behind a locked door in a studio in Sydney's CBD, tattoo guns can be heard buzzing. But in a back corner of the room, it's relatively quiet. This is because Kian "Horisumi" Forreal is using a ...

From starkly rendered waves crashing over a shoulder to a stern samurai warrior wielding a sword on one’s back, the striking designs expressed in Japanese tattoos are among the most iconic in the ...

For Horimitsu, the sound of needles painting skin is a soft, rhythmic scratching, like a solitary cricket - "sha, sha, sha". For 30 years he has tattooed by hand in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, needing nothing ...

Robert Nelson lay patiently on a stage wearing a loincloth and sunglasses inside the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens as world renowned tattoo artist Horitomo diligently prodded at his side with a ...

Tattoo artists in Japan say their art is often misunderstood and associated with the "yakuza" organized crime gangs. People with tattoos are often banned from public bathhouses and military service.

Tebori is Japanese for “hand-carved,” referring to the indigenous method of tattooing by hand using a sharpened bamboo stick called a nomi. Holding the nomi like a pool cue, artists insert the ink ...

Once the sign of a hardened criminal, Japan’s taboo tattoos are winning a legion of new foreign fans. Once the sign of a hardened criminal, Japan’s taboo tattoos are winning a legion of new foreign ...

Japan's Bunshin Tattoo Museum in Yokohama is dedicated to the work of Yoshihito Nakano, who is better known in the body art world as Horiyoshi III, a master of traditional Japanese tattooing. The ...