Penal Tattooing

The Tokugawa government had financial problems. Yoshimune became the eighth shogun in 1716, and began to reform the policy. One of the biggest changes was frugality. He himself reduced his expenditures, and ordered all other officials to cut the cost of departments. The townspeople were also forced to lower their standard of living. They were not allowed to wear showy and luxurious garments.

The most crucial shift was the practice of tattooing as a form of punishment in 1720 (Nakano; 199u, Tamabayashi; 1956, Van Gulik; 1982), which replaced the amputation of nose and ears. Tattooing as punishment did not pertain to the samurai class (Van Gulik, 1982). According to Yoshimune's code, robbers as well as murderers were sentenced to the death. Crimes such as extortion, swindling and fraud were punished by tattooing. The criminals were tattooed with a black ring around an arm for each offense, or with a Japanese character on the forehead.

The tattoo became a mark of punishment, used by the authorities to ostracize the outlaws from society. While the purpose of this penalty was to identify criminals and repeat offenders, tattooing as punishment became a vicious circle. The tattooed criminals were ostracized by society throughout their whole lives. Some of them abandoned all hope, and sank to a level of despair and a cycle of crimes. Consequently, the penal system formed a solitary minority group, called eta class, the social outcasts.For this reason, ordinary people became afraid of tattooed people. The people with the penal tattoos often used the records incised on the skin for illicit purposes. They hardly rebuilt their trust in society. Some of them abandoned themselves to despair and repeated crimes. This phenomenon made other people feel frightened and they came to see any tattooed person as a criminal or evil. Therefore, showing tattoos was perceived as a threat to society.

Eventually, the custom of penal tattooing was abolished in 1870 after being practiced for 150 years.