![]() Japan ĭuring the Edo period of Japan, kyōkaku, urban "chivalrous commoners" or "street knights" typically wore irezumi, prominent full-body tattoos. Main articles: Russian criminal tattoos, Vory V Zakone, and Russian mafia Kyōkaku operated as cultural outlaw figures and were frequently used as characters in Japanese kabuki performances. Russian criminal tattoos have a complex system of symbols that can give quite detailed information about the wearer. ![]() Not only do the symbols carry meaning, but the area of the body on which they are placed may be meaningful too. The initiation tattoo of a new gang member is usually placed on the chest and may incorporate a rose. A rose on the chest is also used within the Russian mafia. Wearing false or unearned tattoos is punishable in the criminal underworld, usually by removal of the tattoo, followed by beatings and sometimes rape, or even murder. Tattoos can be removed (voluntarily, in the case of loss of rank, new affiliation, "lifestyle" change, etc.) by bandaging magnesium powder onto the surface of the skin, which dissolves the skin bearing the marks with painful caustic burns. This powder is gained by filing "light alloy," e.g., lawnmower casing and is a jailhouse commodity. "As Russia's leading expert on tattoo iconography, Mr. Arkady Bronnikov can tell the prisoner's story from looking at the designs on his body. The huge spider in a web that is drawn on his skull reveals, in prison tattoo code, that he is a drug addict. Also, he is a repeat offender: The onion domes of a Russian church fan across his shoulder blades, each of the seven domes representing a different stay in prison. Above the church, across the back of his neck, the convict has stenciled, in Russian, "Not just anyone can hold his head this high.". "The tattoos show that he isn't afraid of pain." "The more tattoos a convict gets, the more sentences he has served, the more respect he gets in prison," says Mr. Tattoos made in a Russian prison often have a distinct bluish color (due to being made with ink from a ballpoint pen) and usually appear somewhat blurred because of the lack of instruments to draw fine lines. The ink is often created from burning the heel of a shoe and mixing the soot with urine, and injected into the skin utilizing a sharpened guitar string attached to an electric shaver.
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