When Will Tattoos Finally See the End of its Social Stigma in Asia?

The small poster next to the main entrance of the neighborhood gym is clearly designed to be seen by all who try to enter its premises. In big red letters, it states that the gym absolutely prohibits tattoos and that anyone found with one will be reported to the police and be escorted off its premises. Regular members of the gym who are later discovered to have tattoos, the poster says, will have their membership immediately revoked. The gym proudly presents itself as a "clean" destination free of body art, and the poster at the entrance symbolizes it.

This gym in a provincial Japanese city is not the only one that makes sure tattoos are not part of its repertoire. The anti-tattoo signs are most commonly associated with public baths, hot springs, and hotel resorts that contain these spa-like facilities. Most often, these signs are related to the establishments' efforts to distance themselves from anti-social forces in Japan, notably the yakuza, or the country's traditional crime syndicates are known. The yakuza have traditionally used full-body tattoos to identify their members, making tattoos stigmatized in Japanese society.

The same association between tattoos and crime is also prevalent in other parts of East and Southeast Asia. Chinese triads, secret societies, and their equivalents on the country's southern border with mainland Southeast Asia also use tattoos to symbolize lifelong brotherhood in crime. Made famous by movies featuring criminal gangs peddling drugs, prostituting women, as well as operating underground casinos and fighting rings, tattoos have been itched into the public imagination as a source of darkness. Those who seek it are looking for a sense of cool that is deviant and rebellious in an anti-social way.

While the idea of tattoos being somewhat edgy is rather universal, inking one's body permanently does not seem to have the same kind of association with crime seen in other countries. In the US, at least, tattoos have come to be a very to express personal values, ranging from religion to love to ideologies. Words, pictures, and cryptic diagrams serve as conversation starters to have others become familiar with what one stands for. Tattoos, in their own way, have added to the individuality that cannot be completely embodied through verbal communication, social background, and the employed profession.

Yet, as Western culture becomes more prevalent in other countries, the idea of tattoos being just seedy is giving way to a more wholesome view. The likes of imported Chicano culture and professional tattoo artists have provided a new generation of Asian youths to see tattoos as benign personalized art, rather than symbolism of darkness. Such positive association has allowed those to get tattoos as long as they are placed where they can be easily hidden from public view. They are exploring a new definition of tattoos in private while still deferring to the broader social stigma.

The ability for tattoo artists, albeit limited in their public acceptance, to thrive in Asian societies, also stems from a broader decline in the criminal elements that used to exclusive use tattoos in Asian societies. Yakuza groups are aging and seeing broader declines in membership, driven by forceful efforts by society at large to exclude them from all public spaces. Crackdowns by law enforcement in China have largely driven criminal gangs underground, almost thoroughly hidden from public view and imagination in the country's biggest cities.

The decline of criminal groups provides an opportunity for tattoos to finally lose the social stigma of crime and darkness, leading to greater alignment in their social purpose between the East and West. While the prospect is not near-term, it is possible to imagine a near future in which Japanese public baths would no longer care about banning those with tattoos, instead of seeing them as personal art no different from wild hair colors to uniquely designed earrings. Tattoo artists, then, can finally advertise their services, just like photographers and painters peddling their output as art.

Indeed, as something truly intimate, tattoos can be much more readily popularized than art sitting in faraway museums or public spaces. By giving their acquirers a firsthand role in both designing and exhibiting the output, tattoos make art an interactive experience that few other mediums can easily replicate. But it is a shame that this personalized piece of art has been so underdeveloped in Asia just because criminal groups understood its potential for personalization much earlier than the general public. As criminal groups disappear from view, an opportunity to reverse this situation beckons.