The Ainu are an Indigenous people of Hokkaido in Japan, and the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands of Russia. DNA evidence demonstrates that the Ainu are direct descendants of the Jōmon, an ancient people who inhabited Japan and the Russian Archipelago for at least 12,000 years.
The garment being worn by the woman pictured, called an attush, was spun from the inner bark of an elm tree and salmon skin. Her necklaces of metal plates and glass balls, called rektunpe, were also designed to protect from spirits attempting to enter the body.
Tattooing was common in Ainu culture, and was strictly reserved for women.
The tattoo process would begin as one small spot above the upper lip when a girl was about six years of age. As they grow older, the tattoo is expanded as a line which curves towards the ears, which is later filled with colour. The pain experienced throughout this process was thought to help prepare the woman for the pain of childbirth. A completed lip tattoo represented that a woman had reached maturity, and helped to prevent spirits from entering the body through the mouth. The tattooing process was done with a traditional knife-like instrument called a makiri. Before the invention of this tool, razor sharp obsidian points were used which were wound with a fiber to control the depth of the incision. As the cutting intensified, blood was wiped away with a cloth saturated in nire, a natural antiseptic procured from hot ash wood or spindlewood. Dark black soot was then rubbed deep into the wound as the woman’s tattooist (usually her aunt or grandmother) sung a yukar, a portion of an epic poem which said: “Even without it, she is beautiful. The tattoo around her lips, how brilliant it is. It can only be wondered at.”
Afterward, the tattooist recited a spell or formula as more pigment was laid into the skin: “pas ci-yay, roski, roski, pas ren-ren”, meaning “soot enclosed remain, soot sink in, sink in.”
