rhyno

Carp Swimming by Water Weeds, Katsushika Hokusai, 1831, Cleveland Museum of Art: Japanese Art

Size: Sheet: 24.2 x 29.2 cm (9 ½ x 11 ½ in.) Medium: color woodblock print; fan

Genshoku Nihon Shisei Taikan- The Ultimate Tattoo Book

I recently saw one of these sell on Ebay for over 200 bucks, and the auction reminded me of this book that I recently looked  at New York Public Library. Published in 1973, Taikan includes many pictures of Japanese Tattoo masters prominent during the 70s, 80s, and even 60s. There are both color and black and white photos, mostly full body and bust shots but also pictures of artists working and festival pictures. The pictures are some of the best examples of purely traditional Japanese tattooing I’ve seen, complex and executed with the traditional colors of black, red, and brown with some green. There is  also a good dose of tattoo history. If you look at the bibliography of a lot of books’ Japanese tattoo history, this book is usually listed, and remains an accepted authority on the subject of Japanese Tattooing. The pictures are just eye candy, and artists featured include old school masters Horiuno, Horigoro, Horiyoshi II, and Horikin. I had written down which artists did the tattoos for the photos I took, but unfortunately that list is long gone.