The Hajichi Tattoo

 Some of you may know about the Hajichi tattoos, but some of you might not which is a shame because its quite an interesting old Okinawa tradition.

Back in the older days of Okinawa, women used sharpened bamboo as a needle to get tattoos on their arms and hands as a magical charm that would word off evil, bring happiness or preserve a woman’s chastity. It is said that a woman was to value her Hajichi over wealth, her husband and life itself. Hajichi took their inspiration from spiderwebs, turtle shells and the insides of flowers. They were commonly tattooed onto a girl's hands and arms when she came of age or during preparations for marriage.

Unfortunately Hajichi tattoos were pretty much wiped out and their memory forgotten in 1899, when the Meiji government placed a ban on hajichi-tattooists, who were usually the village shamans as well, in an attempt to make Okinawa part of a more centralized and homogenous Japan. There have also speculations that the ban was also used as an excuse to arrest female leaders in the community and break up the power they had.