Tattoos in North America
Over the past centuries, tattooing in North America has evolved from a more material and exploitative form of cultural appropriation: In which European colonizers such as Captain James Cook bought and paraded tattooed Indigenous Polynesians as attractions at pubs and world fairs without compensation, to the borrowing of cultural symbols and art styles as seen in the rise of Asian-inspired tiger, dragon and hanzi/kanji (Chinese characters) tattoos for non-Asians (DeMello, 2000) .
Today, tattoos are mostly 1) individualistic: serving to express one’s personality and defining life events, and 2) consumerist: created through transactions between a client and tattoo artist who is expected to meet their needs (Yamada, 2006). Still, art styles are often rooted in specific cultural groups and even individual practitioners. Questions of who has intellectual ownership over certain tattoo designs or whether one has permission to wear tattoos of a culture that is not their own is still a relevant discussion of power dynamics
History of Hanzi/Kanji Tattoos
Hanzi/kanji tattoos first emerged in popular media in the 2000s among celebrities like David Beckham, Shawn Marion, Nicki Minaj, and Megan Fox and simple characters like “love” and “courage” quickly wound up in flash art booklets across tattoo parlours in North America. The practice of getting decorative hanzi/kanji tattoos actually has no history in China and for the most part, tattoos were heavily stigmatized in the nation and reserved for criminals, slaves, and military officials up until the last few decades (Reed, 2000). While the trend was short lived, tons of clueless non-Asian people wound up online for getting tattoos that said things like “Chicken soup” instead of some profound quote (Check out: Hanzi smatter, Reshareworthy post).
This begs the question: Why would you get a tattoo in a language that you don’t understand anyways?! Perhaps it is less about wearing words with a meaning and more about wearing “exotic” and “edgy” iconography instead. Similar to how sailors and navy men collected tattoos from their travels to foreign ports, Chan (2010) argues that hanzi/kanji tattoos are an “ideal commodity” that allows white people in particular to readily purchase and equip “an identity of [being] different”.
The breakdown! Who Benefits and Loses?
At their worst: The decontextualization of Chinese text for aesthetic, decorative tattoos on non-Asian people is disrespectful. In the words of Tang, writer on the Hanzi Smatter blog, the “breezy appropriation of Asian iconography…is like a modern take on 18th-century chinoiserie”, a European imitation of Chinese-style art, pottery, and architecture (Macdonald, 2006). As such the greatest risk that hanzi/kanji tattoos pose is in reproducing Orientalism, meaning the essentialization of “Eastern” society as an inferior, exotic, and distant “Other” in relation to Western society.
At the least: The hanzi/kanji writing system is widespread, has no distinct owner whose sovereign claims could be infringed upon, and several dumb tattoos will not corrupt the writing system. Most likely, individual who wears the hanzi/kanji tattoo faces greater potential losses.
The VERDICT… we have placed hanzi/kanji tattoos closer to the amusing and superficial dimensions of cultural appropriation as they engage with the aesthetic characteristics of Chinese writing culture and are more likely to get a good laugh out of someone than cause direct material losses of land, resources, or opportunities.
Other examples on the Graph
Further examples of how appropriation of cultural symbols in tattoos can exacerbate historical material losses faced by whole communities are seen in:
Justin Trudeau’s Haida tattoo: Which has a design that was used without consultation or permission of the original artist, Robert Davidson’s and displays a raven symbol that represents many oral histories to Northwest Coast Indigenous peoples. Davidson is “humoured” by the tattoo so we put it closer to the “amusing” dimension.
Non-Maori people getting ta moko: Ta Moko is a highly sacred tattoo practice tied to social status, ancestry, and coming of age ceremonies among Maori people. For non-Maori people to get ta moko tattoos, it would diminish the meaning of them and there has actually has actually been a similar style of tattooing called Kirituhi designed from within Maori communities to accommodate non-Maori peoples’ interest in the tattoos’ style (Vowel, 2016).