Inked Pilgrims

A documentary set to be screened at the Club this month challenges the stereotypical image of tattoos in Japan.

Japan has an uneasy relationship with tattoos. Most Japanese associate them with yakuza gangsters.

But in 2019, Alice Gordenker, a longtime Japan resident and journalist, decided to move beyond the stigma. Working with co-directors Kira Dane and David Caprara, she produced a short documentary, Horimono: Japan’s Tattoo Pilgrimage, about an annual pilgrimage of tattooed Japanese to Mount Oyama, a sacred peak in Kanagawa Prefecture.

“This wasn’t a project I set out to do,” Gordenker says. “I had no previous interest in tattoos and, honestly, was leery of getting involved in something with such an unsavory reputation.”

An unlikely encounter with a Shinto priest changed all that. While working as a tourism consultant for the local government, Gordenker met Kunihiko Meguro of Oyama Afuri Shrine. He told her about the Choyukai, a group that has been making the Oyama pilgrimage each summer for more than a century. Its members are men and women who bear traditional, full-body tattoos called horimono, not to be confused with irezumi or Western-style tattoos.

Horimono are contiguous works of body art, arrestingly intricate and rich in color, often completed using a manual tebori technique over many sittings. The motifs, featuring Buddhist deities or heroes from classical literature, are borrowed from Edo-period woodblock prints (horimono means “something carved”).

The 17-minute film, funded through Kickstarter, follows a group of around 80 Choyukai pilgrims and guests during the day of their ascent to the shrine, from their morning ablutions to the evening feast. Their affable demeanor presents a powerful counternarrative to the negative connotations of tattoos in Japan.

“The film is an accurate portrayal of what the Oyama pilgrimage has been for more than two centuries,” says Gordenker, who first visited Japan while studying Japanese at Princeton in 1978. “It became so popular, in part, because it was an opportunity for the common people to travel and have fun.”

Horimono became favored by craftsmen in the Edo period, but the practice was outlawed in 1872 by a government focused on presenting a “modern” image to the world. While the ban was lifted after World War II, tattoos remained unwelcome in places like bathhouses and pools.

Maintaining tradition is a driving force behind the Choyukai’s pilgrimage, during which members display their ink to the shrine deities. As one pilgrim explains in the film: “I have to live up to what I have carved on my back. It’s not exactly spiritual, but I want to be honorable because I have this horimono.”

Despite most of the pilgrims being private about their tattoos and keeping them hidden in their daily lives, the documentary team received unrestricted access during filming.

“They are not activists,” says Gordenker of the group. “To them, their tattoos are something deeply personal.”

Nonetheless, she believes the film can effect change.

“This real issue is to recognize that we are prone to judging people based on their physical appearance, and our preconceived notions may lead us to mistreat others,” Gordenker says. “We accept too many ‘truths’ without challenging them, and that, I think, is the lesson of this film.”