Never experienced Tebori? You should!
Recently I interviewed Kevin for our blog series and we discussed at length many things (go check it out), but one thing that we discussed there was Tebori. It was something Kevin had spoken about, in passing in the shop but for me was nothing more than a thought of ‘sounds wild’. Listening more and more to Kevin about Tebori it was clear the reason I don't see more of it from him was that he doesn't have many people willing to give it a go. Enter serial guinea pig and guy in need of a blog topic, and we did just that. I was willing to cast aside all preconceptions and fears and undergo my first Tebori tattoo.
Instead of dumping a ton of info on you about Tebori like a wikipedia entry, I thought I’d take you on this journey with me as I learn more about this traditional Japanese tattoo style.
Tebori (手彫り) is the ancient Japanese style of tattooing that predates the use of modern machinery and literally translates to ‘hand carving’. The technique is traditionally performed with Sashibo which are hand crafted tools often made from bamboo or other readily available wood with needles attached at one end. Sashibo vary in length, thickness and weight and are usually made by and to the specifications of the artist that uses them.
One of the greatest interests that both myself and Kevin share that sits above everything else, is Japan. When I was 22 I moved and lived in Tokyo working as a language teacher. This was an experience that shaped me greatly and had a real lasting effect on me. Having lived there (in one of the most expensive countries in the world, I was quite broke) I spent many hours admiring the Japanese culture in parks, museums, temples or natural areas in and around the city. Kevin has a deep love for Japanese culture which grew from his love of anime and manga when he was younger, but Kevin is a creature of depth and passion (he hyperfocuses like crazy on things he loves). Combine his love of Japanese folklore, media and history with his tattooing passion and this bore the desire to begin the process of self teaching Tebori.
Tebori as an art form is old and quite literally gate kept behind masters of the art who live in Japan and are very particular on who they invite into their craft, and this sentence isn’t meant to be read as criticism of them or this fact. This is something I learnt and respected greatly whilst living in Japan, their strong preservation of tradition in their modern day culture.
For someone who is trying to recreate this art form here in the UK, that can be quite difficult having to self teach and gather crumbs of information from whatever source they can get it from whether that's books, youtube videos or talking to other artists. There is a small pocket of people in the UK who do Tebori tattoos and having recently watched two of them meet up at the convention I could see them sharing tidbits of information they’d learnt.
So with Kevin's complaints of lacking bodies to poke with a stick I signed myself up for a traditional piece and having already completed a handful of pieces by now I was confident that Kevin could produce an amazing tattoo and boy did he!
The tattoo we originally agreed on tattooing was a Nue, which is a yokai that has the body of a tiger, head of a monkey and the tail is a snake and it looked really awesome. I was down to get this piece but it didn't really fit any of the spaces I was looking to tattoo. So Kevin said fear not and we designed a piece in the shop freehand. This allowed him to fit the piece bespoke into the area that I had and to maximise the design he had in mind. After some discussion we agreed on a spirit lady coming out of a lantern Yokai. The line work took about an hour to draw on and then tattoo onto my forearm.
Now with most people who will perform Tebori tattooing I have it on good authority that they will usually be outlining with a machine as this allows the artist to quickly establish clean linework to then add those vibrant traditional Japanese colours into. Lining with Tebori is possible but takes a substantial amount of time and focus to get it comparable to line work done with a machine. While hand poking with a sashibo is called Tebori, the act of tattooing with a machine is called Wabori.
The Tebori process was very different to being tattooed with a machine, I will say that first and foremost. If you were expecting lots of scary reveals here from my experience you will sadly be missing out, because it was such a much more pleasurable experience comparatively. I anticipated pain but for some reason I thought it would be more painful than the machine. The Sashibo that Kevin made had the exact same needles that a machine would use, so there were no needles that were any more extreme than normal. The most relaxing fact that Kevin told me was actually about the machines that everyone gets tattooed with, which is that they can puncture the skin from 50-3000 times per minute depending on their settings, whereas the Sashibo used for Tebori will be hitting your skin at the rate of one person's stabbing power. The result ultimately is two fold, it allows for a much less traumatic application to the skin meaning the whole area experiences less inflammation and feels less aggressive as the tattoo goes on. Also the way the ink is being applied yields a high pigment density in the skin meaning the colour looks much more vibrant compared to colour done by a machine which can sometimes bruise the area.
My tattoo experience with Tebori felt much calmer with less muscle tensing and flinching. I was able to kind of switch off except for Kevin and Ken’s attempts at distracting me. I would say because there's no machine noise sometimes if you aren't looking at the artist the first prod might come as a shock but then you can settle back into that poking sensation.
Tebori is constricted in many ways, some that are by the natural limitations of the technique and equipment, others lie in the history of Tebori and the influence and rules of traditional Japanese art. These create very beautiful and simple pieces but the colour application and simple line work leaves striking and pieces that reflect the ancient woodblock artform. The piece Kevin created lent itself to that restricted style by using only four colours and using the natural skin tone against the blue highlight of the eyeball to create a white effect. This was the perfect first piece for me and definitely began a reaction that I wasn’t expecting. I’ve now booked in with Kevin to finish off my right arm with a full Tebori sleeve.
Giving Tebori a chance was not something I had on my 2025 bingo list, nor was writing this blog to be honest but here we are! As I have gone through this process from agreeing to being prodded and poked and now as the best healing stage I’ve ever had; I find myself wanting to get onto the treetops and shout out loud for everyone to give it a go. I had so much skepticism about the whole process and it turned out to be one of my favourite tattoo experiences. Now you might be saying, but Adam you got it on your forearm, ‘That's easy’. So I’m planning on completing a blog for each one of my Tebori pieces as a bit of a continuous series where I can explain in depth more of the terminology, techniques, rules and history alongside some Japanese culture. I hope this has both enlightened you to Teboris' existence and also dispelled any fears you may have about being tattooed in this style. The big sell with Tebori is that it causes significantly less trauma to the skin than a tattoo machine does.
