Sonada tattooing one of her creations | Images of Hidalgo’s snake designs

Tattoo art, in the last decade, has gained much mainstream popularity. Even a reality TV show, Ink Master, highlights the skill and stress involved in being a tattoo artist. Here in Vancouver, two artists are keeping alive the traditional tattoo art of Japan and Peru.

Shoko Sonoda is a Vancouver tattoo artist with 17 years of experience who specializes in the traditional Japanese style. According to Sonoda, her clients are getting tattoos for “memorable reasons, emotional attachments, [to display] symbols of strength” and sometimes purely for a display of their fashion sense.

Images of Hidalgo’s snake designs. | Photo courtesy of Emilio Hidalgo

Another tattoo artist, Emilio Hidalgo, has been practicing the art for 12 years. He studies ancient Incan patterns to transpose them into tattoo designs and incorporates the three mystical animals, the condor, the snake, and the jaguar, into this art.

Centuries of Japanese tattoos

Many of the reasons Sonoda’s clients gave for getting tattoos are also reflected in the elaborate and well-studied history of the Japanese tattoo. Scholars date the origin of tattooing in Japan to at least the third century B.C. These tattoos ranged from social rank indicators to cosmetic embellishments and religious markings, such as Buddhist incantations or talismanic symbols. In the case of the inhabitants of northern Honshu, markings were used to show a woman’s devotion to her husband. For a time, after the sixth century, the tattoo became a form of punishment, usually placed on the forehead or arms to delineate criminals and untouchables. Despite numerous governments’ attempts to ban the tattoo throughout the ages, the art form continued.

The pictorial tattoo form appeared much later and was especially inspired by the popular illustrated novel Suikoden. These images form the style of the traditional Japanese tattoo with continued influence today. Having apprenticed in Japan for two years, Sonoda points out that the Japanese tattoo has also influenced the modern Western form. The full body pictorial tattoo, rather than random individual images, especially on a dark background, is part of the Japanese tattoo history.

Donald Richie and Ian Buruma, in their 1980 book The Japanese Tattoo, lament that the traditional Japanese tattoo is a disappearing craft. They might find themselves more reassured if they met Sonoda, who develops her tattoo designs from traditional Japanese art, then modernizes and adapts them for the human body with all its curvatures and elasticity of the skin.

“I really love how [the images] fit on the body,” she says.

Lost history of
Peruvian tattooing

Emilio Hidalgo is equally passionate about his cultural art form as it pertains to tattoos. Unlike the well-documented Japanese history, Peru’s tattoo history was mostly lost. Hidalgo remembers being immediately inspired when he read a National Geographic article on the discovery of a tattooed mummy at the El Brujo site in Peru. This was the 2005 discovery of the Moche high-rank priestess or ruler since named “The Lady of Cao” by archaeologist Régulo Franco Jordán and his team. The mummy’s arms, legs and feet were tattooed with “geometric designs and images of spiders and mythical animals,” according to the article.

The article inspired Hidalgo to incorporate more Peruvian elements into his tattoo designs.

“I am Peruvian; my early experiences were what I saw around me – the culture, the arts,” says Hidalgo. “I researched and put thought into keeping with the designs from various Peruvian periods, hoping to represent the symmetry and story in all Peruvian artistic representation.”

He has not only offered his designs to his clients in Vancouver, but has brought the style back to Peru. Surprisingly, he finds tattooing, in general, to be less popular in Peru, but that it has grown since he started. He does find, however, that these designs are equally popular with both men and women.

It seems that the longevity of the tattoo as an art form has not only been due to the unceasing demand from customers throughout the ages. If these two tattoo artists, from two different backgrounds, with different stories, are any indication, the survival of this art is equally driven by the passion and devotion of the tattoo artist.

“I think I’m not quite halfway through my career,” says Sonoda, after 17 years in the field.

Clearly, their passion runs more than skin deep.

Shoko Sonoda:
www.shokoloco.com/

Emilio Hidalgo:
www.facebook.com/emiliomistical