traditional japanese tattoo by tebori masters

ebori or traditional Japanese tattoo involves using a set of needles attached to the end of a handle made of wood or metal. The tattooist dips the needles in ink and creates a tattoo by pressing the needles rapidly and rhythmically into the skin. The method of penetrating the skin by hand is much the same as an electric tattoo machine with the difference being that the capillary action of opening the skin is different. According to many tebori enthusiasts the hand method does not do as much tissue damage as is possible with an electric needle.

Tebori is just as safe as machine tattooing. Like any professional tattoo studio the needles and the handles are sterilized in an autoclave before they're used. However, because this traditional method takes longer it therefore tends to hurt more. Many people who have been tattooed in this traditional Japanese way claim that the pressure itself does not hurt as much as tattoo machine but is a different type of pain. Modern day people tend to have an aversion to pain because of years of conditioning telling them pain is bad. The one main drawback of tebori over a tattoo machine is that the modern method gets the job done a lot faster but then again a lot of people like pain and are happy sitting in a chair for hours taking it ;-)

There are only a handful of artists in the United States at any one time that can do this traditional Japanese tattoo style. This can also fluctuate according to how many Japanese people are visiting or residing temporarily in the United States offering this method or teaching other apprentice tattoo artists. One of the hardest parts about learning tebori is not just the skill of making the tools but also getting your head around how to use them.

It is made all the harder when most artists are conditioned to holding the tools at the tip the way you would hold a pencil. Whereas traditional Japanese masters of the technique hold the handle at its far end which is much harder. As a result the time factor time from being a tebrori apprentice to a fully fledged tebori master is so much longer than it would take a Western tattoo apprentice to learn the ropes.