From starkly rendered waves crashing over a shoulder to a stern samurai warrior wielding a sword on one’s back, the striking designs expressed in Japanese tattoos are among the most iconic in the ...

At a small, clinically-lit studio in Tokyo’s Roppongi district, fearsome warriors and mythical creatures glare out from paper drawings lining the perimeter of the space. The tattooist here, who asked ...

Calves bulging and back rippling with sinewy muscles, Du Xing – a bandit in the Chinese martial arts novel “Water Margin” – moves towards a precipice. His arms are raised overhead, clutching a massive ...

For Horimitsu, the sound of needles painting skin is a soft, rhythmic scratching, like a solitary cricket - "sha, sha, sha". For 30 years he has tattooed by hand in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, needing nothing ...