Once worn by nearly every Ryukyuan woman, these intricate hand tattoos were outlawed for over a century.
These sacred tattoos were banned in Okinawa. A new generation is bringing them back.
Once worn by nearly every Ryukyuan woman, these intricate hand tattoos were outlawed for over a century.
By Haley Harrison
Inside a small tatami room just outside the center of Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, a quiet rebirth of a once-banned tattoo practice is taking place.Β Moeko Heshiki, one of the few remainingΒ hajichaas, lays out her stick-and-poke tools with practiced care. My eyes are drawn to the long, dark arrows that trace the length of her fingersβa sacred art now nearly lost.
I tell her that the last woman in my lineage to haveΒ hajichiΒ tattoos was my great-great-grandmother, the weight of both pride and loss settling over me.
βPeople sometimes tell me, βOh, you opened a box,β she says, alluding to the cultural practices Okinawans were forced to lock away. Soon, the tattoos that once marked the hands of generations of Okinawan women will mark my own.
The colonization of Ryukyu
Long before U.S. military bases lined its shores, the islands known today as Okinawa were once the independentΒ Ryukyu Kingdom. In 1879, Japanβs Meiji government annexed the islands, abolishing the kingdom and absorbing the newly named Okinawa Prefecture into its empire.
Ryukyuan sovereignty was dismantled on all fronts: communal lands were seized and redistributed, the indigenous languages were prohibited, and the political and social systems in which women held positions of leadership were overthrown.Β
Adriane Tengan-Stoia and Lex McClellanβUfugusuku, doctoral students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explain that women were the spiritual leaders in Ryukyuan society and were believed to possess a divine connection to the spiritual realm.Β
βBefore Western intervention and Japanese colonization, theΒ chifijing ganashi me,Β or high priestess, served as the king's counterpart,β says Tengan-Stoia. McClellanβUfugusuku adds that the new Meiji government βwanted to put heteropatriarchy firmly in the Ryukyus as it was in Japanβ and began persecuting women in positions of power and targeting their cultural traditions.
As a result, hajichiβhand-poked markings that adorned the hands, wrists, and fingers of Ryukyuan women for centuriesβwas banned.
In the days of Ryukyu, girls as young as six would begin their hajichi journey by receiving two small circles, calledΒ tontonmi, between their knuckles. As they grew and reached new milestones, such as getting married, mastering complicated weaving techniques, or turning 60, so did their tattoos.Β
