The Modified Body

Nose ornament with two scorpions

Moche culture, Loma Negra, Piura Valley, Piura Province, Peru; Early Intermediate Period, 500-700 CE

Gold & silver

Gold, sapphire, and emerald earring, Greece, 3rd century BC

Hori Ngakapa Te Whanaunga, Maori chief of the Ngatiwhanaunga tribe, active 1851-1885.

A young Maori woman with a facial tattoo, Rotorua, New Zealand, late 19th 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. Moeko Heshiki, one of the few remaining 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 fingers—a sacred art now nearly lost.

I tell her that the last woman in my lineage to have hajichi tattoos was my great-great-grandmother, the weight of both pride and loss settling over me.

“People sometimes tell me, ‘Oh, you opened a box,” 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 independent Ryukyu Kingdom. In 1879, Japan’s 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. 

Adriane Tengan-Stoia and Lex McClellan‑Ufugusuku, 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. 

“Before Western intervention and Japanese colonization, the chifijing ganashi me, or high priestess, served as the king's counterpart,” says Tengan-Stoia. McClellan‑Ufugusuku adds that the new Meiji government “wanted to put heteropatriarchy firmly in the Ryukyus as it was in Japan” and began persecuting women in positions of power and targeting their cultural traditions.

As a result, hajichi—hand-poked markings that adorned the hands, wrists, and fingers of Ryukyuan women for centuries—was banned.

In the days of Ryukyu, girls as young as six would begin their hajichi journey by receiving two small circles, called 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. 

In those days, unmarked women were considered imperfect, undesirable. One of the most enduring ullalim, a form of epic poetry that is chanted by the village bard, is the story of the warrior hero Banna who falls in love with the beautiful Lagunnawa. In the pre-colonial tale, their tattooed bodies are celebrated as badges of honor, wealth, beauty, and bravery.  When the American Catholic missionaries came and built schools in Kalinga, village girls were made to cover their arms with long sleeves. Being tattooed became a point of shame when women ventured to the city, and eventually fewer girls from the succeeding generation continued the tradition as Western concepts of beauty and respectability began to permeate the culture.  from "Apo Whang-Od And The Indelible Marks Of Filipino Identity" VOGUE PHILIPPINES, April 2023 Cover Story

GUYS. GUYYYYYYYS. I don't know how many of you will be interested in this, but please allow me to share the latest Vogue PH issue. Because I am floored.

The woman on the cover is Apo Whang-Od, the oldest and, until just recently, the only remaining mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattooist) in history. And now, at 106 years old, might also be the oldest person to be on the cover of Vogue.

Apo Whang-Od has, in the last decade, been heralded to national treasure status in the Philippines for keeping a significant part of her people's culture (the Butbut tribe of Buscalan, Kalinga) alive, even through years of Western colonization and modernization. Through her, an art form and custom that was on the verge of being lost to history has had a reemergence, and allowed a lot of Filipinos to rediscover and reconnect with our roots.

An actual ancient gold earring which can be seen depicted in some of the so called Fayum Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt has been discovered in Southeast Bulgaria by archaeologists excavating the Ancient Roman colony Deultum near the town of Debelt, Burgas District, close to the Black Sea coast.

Deultum was a Roman colony, which according to Roman law signified a status equal to that of the city of Rome itself. In today’s Bulgaria, there are only three Roman cities which enjoyed this status – Deultum (Colonia Flavia Pacis Deultensium) near Burgas, Ratiaria (Colonia Ulpia Traiana Ratiaria) near Archar, Ulpia Oescus near Gigen.

“Oriini Kaipara made history when she read v 1’s midday news bulletin today.

Kaipara has a moko kauae, a traditional lower chin tattoo worn by Māori women, and is the first to appear on a mainstream news bulletin to bear one.

According to TVNZ, this represented the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for Kaipara.

Two years ago, she made headlines when DNA testing revealed that she was “100 per cent Māori.” Kaipara is of Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, Tūwharetoa and Te Arawa descent.”

Read the full piece and watch the video here