SHOWCASES JAPANESE TECHNIQUE : EXHIBIT GETS TO THE POINT OF TATOOING

Last weekend, a small group of visitors from Japan was in town. Not only did they tour the world-reknowned zoo, but they also visited sleazy lower Broadway to check in on its not (to polite society) so well-known tattoo parlors. These were not people on a lark--they were serious artists engaged in a kind of aesthetic research.

The group from Japan was here in conjunction with an exhibit showcasing the art of tattooing that opened last Saturday at Balboa Park’s Museum of Photographic Arts.

Visiting the tattoo parlors were Masato Sudo, a photographer who recently published a book on tattoo art and whose photographs are in the exhibit; Goro Sakamoto, a tattoo artist known as “Horijin,” and Shinjiro Nishizawa, who has been the subject of Sakamoto’s needle and of Sudo’s lens. Nishizawa’s total body tattoo is featured life-size, front and back, in the exhibit.

Accompanying the three on the rainy-day tour was museum executive director Arthur Ollman, who scheduled the show, “Ransho: Indigo Body,” three months ago during a visit to Japan. It was then that he first became acquainted with Sudo’s book, “Japanese Tattooing: Ransho: The Photos of Masato Sudo.”

Forty-one of Sudo’s Cibachrome prints are on view through April 6. The most spectacular, because they are full-body scale, are the front and back images of Nishizawa and one other male subject. The remaining smaller photographs feature details of bodies posed for aesthetic effects rather than for didactic purposes.

Sudo has posed pairs and even groups of tattooed subjects to create intricately patterned compositions with a limited palette of blue, green, red, yellow and orange.

Sudo became interested in tattoo art indirectly. As an art student a decade ago, he was interested in photographing large trucks decorated by their drivers as expressions of individuality. Sudo encountered a truck driver whose body decorations surpassed those of his truck and has since then documented examples of what is regarded as a dying art form.

A major difference between Japanese and American tattooing is that the Japanese favor overall tattooing. The most extreme cover the body--from neck to wrists and ankles--like a form-fitting garment. The least inclusive cover only the back, like a shell on a turtle. This form, a kind of “closet tattoo,” is most popular with businessmen who dare to be different from their colleagues, but not by too much and not too perceptibly. Tattooing has from time to time been banned in Japan and even now is not recognized.

Tattoo artist Horijin labels the American variety pejoratively as “one-spot tattoos.” In Japan, small tattoos are favored only by women. Partial tattoos on men evince a lack of commitment to the art form, the theory goes.

“Tattooing,” Horijin said through an interpreter, “demonstrates patience and a tolerance for pain. It is not like the American idea of being macho. It is spiritual as well. It represents the power of man, inside as well as outside. It represents self-control and discipline. The seriousness of attitude separates Japanese from American tattooing.”

Tattooing has been practiced in Japan at least since the 5th Century B.C., probably for religious and cosmetic purposes. Later, however, it was used to identify “untouchables,” especially workers who dealt with dead things--both animal and human--and to identify convicted criminals. Since the late 17th Century, tattooing has been appreciated as a decorative art and developed along with popular art forms like novels, Kabuki theater and ukiyoe woodblock prints.

Tattoo artists owe much to printmakers. They both use an outline system with large areas of pure color and similar shading. One of Japan’s most famous printmakers, Kunyoshi, inspired many basic tattoo patterns. Others originated in Japanese mythology.