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I stayed with Sailor Jerry for a week. Every day I watched him work, and at night we went back to his house and had long talks. I liked him. Like me, he was a tough guy who had survived many hardships. Every day I got to like him better. I nicknamed him "Popeye" because he was tough and strong. When it was time for me to go and we said "goodbye" at the airport I called him "pop." After that when we wrote letters I always called him "pop" and he called me "son."

When I tattoo I always do the outlining and black shading by hand, but I use a machine for putting in the color. There are two kinds of outline, a heavy outline which is used for the outside parts of the design, and finer lines, which are used on the inside and for details. I have tried to outline by machine, but I don't like the results. The line always looks dead to me. I don't know why. Outlining by hand is alive. It's not easy to do, but it's the best.

Today most Japanese tattoo artists use stencils. I am the only one who follows the method of my teacher. This method is to draw a little bit, and tattoo it in, and then draw and tattoo a little more until the design is finished. To do this you have to see the whole design in your imagination before you start.

My teacher gave me a good book about the history of Japanese tattooing: "Bunshin Hyakushi" (A Hundred Styles of Tattooing) by Tamabayashi Haru-o, published in 1936. According to "Bunshin Hyakushi" it was firemen who got big tattoos in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were heroes because fire was a great danger and Japanese houses, which were made of wood and paper, burned quickly. So sometimes firemen lost their lives to save people. The geisha girls liked the firemen because they were brave. In the Edo period [prior to 1867] it was the firemen, but not the yakuzas, who got tattooed.

During most of the nineteenth century an artist and a tattooer worked together. The artist drew the picture with a brush on the customer's skin, and the tattooer just copied it. But then some of the tattooers studied drawing and learned how to draw the designs themselves.

After the Edo period the yakuzas started getting tattoos because they wanted to look tough. Tattoo artists call yakuza tattoos "odoshibori." It means a tattoo that is just meant to frighten people. The yakuzas don't care if it is artistic. The real tattoo lover wants quality, not quantity, and he wants to get the tattoo from a famous artist.

In 1936 when fighting broke out in China almost all the young men were drafted into the Army. But people with lots of tattoos were thought to be potential discipline problems, so they weren't drafted. Then a lot of people got tattooed just to avoid the draft, and the government passed a law against tattooing. After that the tattooers had to work in secret. After World War II General MacArthur liberalized the Japanese laws, and tattooing was legal again. But the tattoo artists continued to work privately by appointment on customers who were introduced by someone who knew them, and this tradition is still followed today.

We have word in Japanese: "inshindenshin," which means telepathy or tacit understanding. This is what happens when I tattoo by hand. My heart and my hand have the same thought, and the thought is transmitted by the tip of my finger to the customer's skin. That's why it is not painful and there is no blood. There is never any swelling or inflammation.

When the tattoo artist's heart is right we call it a "Buddha heart." Maybe someone thinks I have a secret or some magic, but there is no secret and there is no magic. When I tattoo I have what we call "zen" [wholeness or goodness] of heart, and I practice total concentration. We also call this state of mind "seishin toitsu" ["seishin" means spirit; "toitsu" means uniformity] This is the same kind of concentration one must practice if there is a serious problem in one's life. At such a time one must practice total concentration to find the right solution.

© 1996 by Kazuo Oguri Translated and edited by Steve Gilbert