If you are thinking of the Japanese tattoos as an ancient trademark of a culture you are wrong.
Contrary to popular belief they only reached their peak in the 18th century. This sadly means that samurais never had tattoos. They still remain cool though because they had weird hairdos and they used to chop limbs off.
Of course a legitimate question arises. What makes these goddamn tattoos so special anyway. The horimono or irezumi tattoos as they were called back then were quite different in concept from their Western counterparts. They were more or less almost like paintings depicting scenes with gods which happened to be popular at the moment. The whole craze would have probably died off, if by accident or rather forced Japan decided to finally cease its isolation. This means that Japanese tattoos began to spread like wildfire through the Western world.
Tzar Alexander got one when he made a visit there. This probably didn’t make him very popular with the nobility, but the rumor is that Rasputin gave him the thumb up and to be honest when that man approved something it must have been something truly awesome. Too bad that both Rasputin and tzar Alexander had a horrible, gruesome death.
After a while Japan got civilized and tattoos went underground, soon being considered as a trademark of the infamous Yakuza.
Today though this art is seeing a resurrection probably because they got tired of the manga cartoons, although this statement may be a little overoptimistic.
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