Tattoos and Piercings in Japan: Where They Still Stand Out

Tattoos and ear piercings now pass without much comment in a lot of countries. In Japan they get sorted apart, and a tattoo can decide whether a shared bath lets you in.

The heavier weight falls on the tattoo. Large traditional pieces, called irezumi, stayed tied in the public mind to the yakuza. A pierced earlobe carries a different problem: dress codes, and the sharpest of those codes is at school.

When tattooing was a sentence

During the Edo period the shogunate used tattooing as a criminal sentence. From 1720, some convictions left a permanent mark on the arm or the forehead. Decorative work grew in the same centuries among firefighters, couriers, and the heroes printed by ukiyo-e artists. The penal mark is the part that stayed in public memory.

In 1872 the Meiji government banned both giving and receiving decorative tattoos. Officials worried that foreign visitors would take the custom as proof of a backward country. The ban lasted until 1948, when the postwar occupation lifted it. Full-body irezumi remained, for many people, a sign of the yakuza. Yakuza tattoos carry the longer history of that link. The doorway rule reaches further, to anyone whose ink is visible.

School codes, and the boy in the winter uniform

Japanese schools write appearance rules that cover hair, makeup, jewelry, and skin. Pierced ears, dyed or bleached hair, and tattoos sit on many forbidden lists, so manga can use any of the three as shorthand for a delinquent.

Horimiya builds a character on that shorthand. Izumi Miyamura has nine piercings, four in each ear and one on the lip, and dark tattoos on his left shoulder, upper arm, and side. At school he stays in the winter uniform and blazer so the ink never shows, and he keeps his hair long enough to cover the holes in his ears. Classmates read him as a quiet, slightly gloomy boy. The piercings and the tattoos would put him on the wrong side of the uniform check.

An earlobe piercing that would be ordinary for an adult elsewhere becomes a school problem under that rulebook. The yakuza association belongs to tattoos. Hair dye shares the page with the ban on earrings. Both sit inside the broader rules of a Japanese school day.

Work, and the refuge of the big cities

After graduation the check moves from the homeroom to the job. Hotels, banks, shops, and public counters often treat a visible tattoo or a facial piercing as the wrong look in front of customers. People who want to keep the ink, or a row of ear studs, look for refuge in the big cities, where several ways of dressing share a carriage and a second glance is less automatic.

Do the bathhouse rules apply to visitors?

Having a tattoo has been legal since the 1948 repeal. Admission to a shared bath is a separate decision, made by each onsen, sento, pool, and gym. Many refuse, because other guests connect visible ink with organized crime and the operator would rather avoid the complaint.

The Japan Tourism Agency asked hotels and inns about this for the first time and released the figures on October 21, 2015. It contacted 3,768 facilities and received 581 replies. Among those replies, 55.9 percent refused guests with tattoos, 30.6 percent allowed them, and 12.9 percent allowed them only when the design was covered or otherwise limited. The percentages describe the houses that answered.

In March 2016 the agency asked operators to admit tattooed foreign visitors. The request binds nobody, and it leaves the rule for Japanese guests as it was. Cover stickers and separate bathing hours were the compromises on offer. Visitors were already being turned away, which is why the agency spoke up. A passport does not open the door on its own.

A small tattoo rarely changes the answer. A refusal usually covers any visible ink, large or small. Where a cover is accepted, it has to be the method the house specifies, and it has to hide the whole design. The reliable way around a refusal is a private bath reserved for one party, called kashikiri, or a bath inside the room. Once you are in, washing before you soak is the expected order.

At the bath, rings and studs come off with the watches and glasses. Loose metal is a hazard in a shared tub. The dispute at the door is the tattoo.

Miyamura's long hair only solves the holes in his ears. A piercing can come out for the water or for a shift at the counter. A tattoo stays on the skin. Wearing one is legal, and a communal bath, a pool, or a strict employer can treat it as a reason to refuse the person, whether that person is Japanese or visiting.