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I was an apprentice for three years before my teacher allowed me to tattoo. During that time I was very eager to start tattooing, and every day my enthusiasm grew stronger. It's like when you are longing to meet your girlfriend: the longer you wait, the more you desire her.

Finally one day my teacher gave me a bamboo stick and some needles and told me to make a hand tool. I began by practicing on his leg. There is nothing like human skin, and it is the only thing we can practice on. At first I practiced without ink to get the right rhythm and the right sound. When the needles penetrate the skin they make a sound. The sound has to be low-pitched and you have to have the right rhythm. After several weeks of this my teacher let me use ink to tattoo a cherry blossom on his leg, but I didn't do a very good job. My teacher showed me how to relax, not to hurry, and make a smooth line. Then after he went to bed I would practice on my own leg. For three months I practiced outlining, and then for three more months I practiced shading. My teacher had a big black area on his leg where students had practiced on him. After six months of practice, my teacher let me do my first tattoo on a customer. It was a cover-up consisting of cherry blossoms on a black background.

My teacher did all his work by hand. He had heard about tattooing machines, but at that time, machines were not available in Japan. He had only two colors: brown and reddish orange. After I did that first cover-up my teacher let me help him. He would do the outlining, and I did the black shading. Then he would finish by doing the color.

After five years of apprenticeship it was the custom for a tattoo artist to open his own studio. But because I was grateful to my teacher for all he had taught me, after I completed my apprenticeship I stayed and worked in his studio for another year and gave him the money I earned. After he died I sent money each month to his widow as long as she lived. That used to be the Japanese custom, but it doesn't exist anymore.

After six years in Tokyo I went back to Gifu. The man I stabbed hadn't died after all, and the police weren't looking for me any more, so I opened a tattoo studio in Gifu.

Now the apprenticeship system is different. I have four apprentices. They begin to work on their own after only two years of study. I give them lots of drawing assignments, and I insist that they try to draw fine designs which have life, and not cartoons. Of course I don't hit them. Now we do things as they are done in the US, so apprentices aren't so tough any more. There were many bad things about the old style of teaching. But there were also good things about it. Today many people try to start tattooing without having studied under a master, but they will always be amateurs. They make many mistakes, and merely copy designs without understanding their significance.

At the time I opened my studio I didn't know how to get tattoo supplies from the US. One day I saw an American sailor with a good tattoo and I asked him who did it. He told me it was by Sailor Jerry of Honolulu and he gave me Sailor Jerry's business card. I wrote to Sailor Jerry and asked if he would sell me some colors. He wrote back and gave me the address of Spaulding and Rogers in the US. But I wanted to meet Sailor Jerry so I wrote him again. He told me he had a friend, Mr. Kida, who was the president of a big company in Tokyo. I wrote to Mr. Kida and he came to Gifu to see me. Mr. Kida told me he thought Sailor Jerry was a good man, and a gentleman, and the greatest American tattoo artist. So I arranged to go to Hawaii and meet Sailor Jerry. This was in 1971. Mr. Kida showed me Sailor Jerry's picture so I could recognize him, and when my plane landed in Hawaii he met me at the airport.

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