Ten more tattooing facts

1. Roman Emperor Caeser wrote that all Briton’s stain their skins with woad, and Herod of Antioch found that the Briton’s had animal designs incised onto their bodies.
2. The Pict’s of Scotland also painted their bodies in blue woad and in some cases many believe that they were also tattooed.
3. In A.D.325 Emperor Constantine the Great, banned facial tattoos among Christian’s living in the Roman Empire. As it disfigured what was fashioned in God’s image. And in 787AD the British council of churches at Calcuth, Northumberland – under the direction of the second council of Nicaea (the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Christianity) – banned all body markings as a pagan practice.
4. Tattoos are generally regarded as marks that sailors have done, which of course is perfectly true. For in the days before overseas holidays, sailors would bring home souvenirs of travel – in rather the same way as one would bring home a gift today. And for sailors in a bygone age, a tattoo would be the souvenir of a well-travelled man. 
5. In the journal of British settler John Smith (1579-1631) he recorded of how he became a settler in Virginia of the USA and of how he was captured by Indians and just as he was about to be put to death he was saved by a thirteen-year-old girl called Pocahontas, and not only was he saved he was subsequently adopted by the tribe. And in his writings, he also told of the body mark tattoos that the Indian’s of Virginia decorated their bodies with. Consisting of black spots on their arms, legs and faces.
6. In the autobiography ‘So You Can’ (published in 2001) from Japanese lawyer Mitsuyo Ohira, she writes ‘it is never to late to start over’. Starting with a childhood that saw her bullied by kids at school, becoming so bad that it prompted a suicide bid at the age of 14, by the act of Hara-Kiri no less. And where at the tender age of 16 saw her married to a Yakuza crime lord. The painful leaving behind of the child that she had at 19, after she turned her back on her then life to start a new one, and the hardships she has faced in turning it all around to become a top Lawyer in her country. Her book ‘So You Can’ has sold over 2 million copies and she became the deputy-mayor of the Osaka region of Tokyo in 2003. But what is probably more surprising to a lot of people is that Mitsuyo has a full Japanese tattoo back piece and when she was once asked if she was going to get rid of her tattoos (in a magazine article) – She was quoted as saying ‘It’s possible to erase them of course. But even if I do so, it’s not going to change anything. The past will not run a different course because I got rid of my tattoos. Changing the surface doesn’t change what is underneath. I’ll keep my tattoos until I die’.
7. In issue 72 of July 1991’s DC Marvel comic ‘Avengers Westcoast – Irezumi The Tattoo Spirit’ Stan Lee presented the main feature (strip) entitled ‘CHAOS and CHRYSANTHEMUMS’. In which the strip has in it the Ironman doing battle with the Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza. Of course there was the totally tattooed Yakuza member, who went by the name (you’ve guessed it) Irezumi (the Japanese name for tattoo). But it wasn’t the man who fights – it is the man’s tattoos that gave the Ironman a bit of a bashing (the tattoos depict the essence of whatever they are up against). So to fight Irezumi you had to fight the tattoos first. This DC comic has a painted cover of a man with tattoos of Marvel comic hero’s tattooed on him. Priced at (in 1991) a dollar US – $1.25 Canada and 60p in the UK. 
8. Keen Manchester United soccer fan Shaun Southwick was so besotted with his team that in 2000 he had all of the clubs 64 honor’s tattooed on his back.
9. On the 16th of February 2000 in Glasgow, Scotland – a man tried to trick police into thinking that they were questioning his brother, forgetting that his real name was tattooed across his knuckles. 
10. Back in the days of pop group ‘Take That’ Robbie Williams was tattooed by Hollywood Mark (Favela) in Hanky Panky’s tattoo studio Amsterdam, Holland – Mark has also tattooed the Dutch soccer superstar Patrick Kluivert.

By Paul Sayce

Posted on 18th January 2010