I am writing this message in response to the authors of an Open Letter dated March 2 (although it has been revised) by the Luchu Study Group, regarding material presented in my 2024 book Tattoo Traditions of Asia. This letter, which is prone to several factual errors, was shared with me on March 6, 2025, by Co Shigeko Lewis (@shimanchuhajichi) who is the primary signatory of said letter. I can say with complete honesty that I had no knowledge of this group’s existence or its members before March 6, 2025.
If you’re not familiar with my work, I have spent over 20 years documenting Indigenous tattoos. This work carries a significant responsibility, and I am dedicated to amplifying the voices of the elders who carry these ancient markings, as well as the communities that uphold them. Every tattooed elder who has invited me to interview them or capture their portrait, without exception, takes great pride in their hard-earned tattoos. They, too, wished for others to understand and value them both now and in the future. Aspects of this longstanding collaborative work are showcased throughout Tattoo Traditions of Asia, and they would not have been possible without the consent and support of hundreds of tattooed elders, their communities, and leaders who generously shared their time and stories with me. I am also deeply grateful to numerous local collaborators, translators, and Indigenous knowledge experts who guided and verified my work, ensuring that the oral histories and voices I recorded were faithfully represented.
I have always held myself accountable for the words I write, and with this response I am taking a stand.
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STATEMENT #1: The Open Letter begins with “We have reached out directly to Lars in good faith to engage in a conversation to address this chapter….and we have been brushed off and dismissed.”
FACT CHECK: I am unsure who ‘We’ refers to, as ‘they’ have never reached out to me, or at least if someone did on their behalf, it was not communicated clearly. Thus, how could I have ‘brushed off and dismissed’ the Luchu Study Group when I only became aware of their existence a few days ago (i.e., March 6, 2025)?
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STATEMENT #2: Luchu Study Group: “[The] omission of genuine revival efforts in this chapter is troubling.”
FACT CHECK: I did not include a section on the hajichi revival in Tattoo Traditions of Asia because the only hajichyaa/hajichaa of Okinawan heritage tattooing in Japan did not reply to my attempts to collaborate. These messages were sent to her over a period of several months in 2022-23. The final manuscript was delivered to my publisher on February 7, 2023.
I noted this fact to Ms. Lewis (@shimanchuhajichi) on Oct. 14, 2024, via a DM exchange she initiated (I would be happy to share this record with the public). At this time, she did not represent herself as a member of the Luchu Study Group, but she acknowledged receipt of my response.
I never heard from Ms. Lewis (@shimanchuhajichi) again on this matter, until I received the Open Letter which she decided to publish.
FACT CHECK: Furthermore, I did mention the hajichi revival on the last page (p. 64) of the Japan chapter, so it was not ‘omitted.’ I quoted a 2019 newspaper article which features the words of a woman of Ryukyuan heritage who received her hajichi: “I want to make more people aware of the existence of hajichi,” she told reporter Kazuyuki Ito. “Hajichi symbolized the pride of women,” she said, “and I feel proud when I imagine the feelings of my ancestors, and it is my joy to have been born as an Okinawan” (Ito 2019).
In the next and final paragraph of the chapter, I also highlighted a recent museum exhibition on hajichi, which – if you did not know – was co-curated with Ryukyuan collaborators and explored the hajichi revival:
“In October 2019, the Okinawa Prefectural Museum mounted an exhibition on hajichi that compared it to Indigenous tattooing traditions in Taiwan… several women [were tattooed there] with their first hajichi…”
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STATEMENT #3: Luchu Study Group: “The underlying assumption that opens this book is that the Ainu and Ryukyuan people are regional variations of “Japanese” culture.”
FACT CHECK: I stated the Ainu and Ryukyuans are descendants of the Jōmon people. Furthermore, I wrote that Japanese people, who (as foreigners) arrived in the Japanese archipelago from mainland Asia during the Yayoi period (500 BC-250AD), eventually gave rise to their descendants – the Japanese people.
p. 16. “Recent DNA evidence, dental morphology, and other biological traits suggest the Ainu of Hokkaido and Ryukyuan peoples of the 南島 Nantō (Southern Islands) are direct descendants of the ancient Jōmon people (Arutiunov 1999:31; Ishida 1999:56; Jinam et al. 2012; Jinam et al. 2015)…” I am certainly not the first person to make this statement – see the Indigenously co-authored 1999 book AINU: Spirit of a Northern People (Smithsonian Institution).
p. 20-21. “…foreigners such as the Japanese who first encountered tattooed peoples in the Ryukyus could not make sense of their permanent body markings…”
p. 43. “This artistic tradition continued to some degree into the subsequent Yayoi period (500 BC– 250 AD) of Japanese history, when an influx of farming peoples from the Asian mainland arrived in the Japanese archipelago to introduce rice agriculture (Kaner 2009:130). Primarily centered in Kyūshū and extending to northern Honshū, the Yayoi people gradually displaced Indigenous Jōmon hunter-gatherers and eventually gave rise to their descendants—the Japanese people.”
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STATEMENT #4: Luchu Study Group: “And to say nothing of the vastly different tattoo techniques and practices that the chapter avoids.”
FACT CHECK: My chapter offers one of the most thorough descriptions of Ainu and Ryukyuan tattoo techniques ever written in English. See the section: RYUKYUAN TATTOO PRACTITIONERS: PROCESS, PIGMENTS, AND PAYMENTS (28-34pp.), an illustrated section of the book covering 7 pages.
I provided 3+ pages (45-49pp.) devoted to the Ainu tattooing process and technique, including 1.5+ pages on the preparation of tattoo pigment(s).
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STATEMENT #5: Luchu Study Group: “Further, the chapter is written with a heavy reliance on non-Ryukyuan sources, and a failure to address the colonist lens from which many of them are written.”
FACT CHECK: Anyone studying Ryukyuan tattooing understands that there are only a handful of resources—mostly in Japanese—about hajichi. I included more than 20 references, including two significant community resources: Yomitan-son Kyōiku I’inkai 1982 & Nakijinmura bunkazai chōsa hōkoku-sho dai 7-shū 1983.
I also addressed the colonist lens of several of these publications.
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STATEMENT #6: Luchu Study Group: “This publication exclusively features the tattoo work of a “neo-tribal” artist, (a word with its own set of problematic issues), who is not Ryukyuan and tattoos non-Ryukyuan people with our heritage design.”
FACT CHECK: I did not write that this artist is a “neo-tribal” artist. What I stated is that his “blackwork” tattoos have “neotribal” roots. For any student of modern blackwork tattooing, “neo-tribal” tattoos and “New Tribalism” were coined in the early 1980s to describe an emergent tattoo movement and/or genre of tattooing. The “neo-tribal” tattooing style was driven by tattoo publications such as tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy’s TattooTime: New Tribalism (1982), tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle’s The Tattoo Historian Magazine (1982 onwards), among others.
Additionally, the section of the book they reference centers on the artist’s Jōmon Tribe Project, which draws inspiration from the imagined body modifications of the ancient Jōmon people, not the Ryukyuan people.
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STATEMENT #7: Luchu Study Group: “Both the Ainu and Ryukyuan peoples have endured centuries of colonization and forced assimilation by Japan, and our communities have spent painful decades fighting to preserve our distinct cultures.”
FACT CHECK: I completely agree with this statement, which is why I delve deeply into these historical events in the book. If you have any doubts, I encourage you to read it for yourself, like Mapu.
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