The Meiji Restoration until Postwar Japan

In its strive to adopt Western civilizations, the Imperial Meiji government banned tattooing as something considered a barbaric relict of the past. The funny thing was that the Japanese irezumi artists now got new clients - the sailors from the foreign ships anchoring in Japanese harbors. Thus Japanese tattoo art was spread to the West.

During the first half of the twentieth century, horimono remained a forbidden art form until 1948, when the prohibition was officially lifted. Some say that this step had become necessary to legalize the demand by soldiers of the American occupation forces for horimono and irezumi.