Women of the Ryukyu, who lived on the southern islands of what is now Japan, used to have the markings, which were usually done by hand.
The monochrome designs, which ranged from delicate symbols resembling arrows to a grid of large dots, were used to mark significant events in a woman’s life and, in some cases, were thought to guarantee her passage to heaven.
However, a process of forced assimilation set the hajichi tradition on the path to extinction when Japan annexed the Okinawa island chain in 1879.
Due to the fact that authorities frequently tattooed criminals in order to distinguish them, tattoos were associated with illegal behavior on the mainland of Japan.
In Naha, the main city of Okinawa, 30-year-old Heshiki told AFP, “Those with hajichi were fined and discriminated against.”
“Rather than being understood as hajichi, the body art was degraded as tattoos.”
After World War II, the markings were banned, but they were never used again. As women who wore hajichi died, the culture seemed doomed to disappear.
Philip FONG / AFP Heshiki, who was born to a father from Okinawa and a mother from Japan’s main island Honshu, discovered hajichi while researching possible tattoos. He is one of the most well-known documenters of hajichi body art.
She stated, “I was dying to have them on me.” She described feeling “more connected to myself, or to Okinawa” after having a tribal-themed tattoo done on her.
“I felt like I had finally become who I was,”
She wears hajichi on all of her fingers, with arrow-shaped ones on the tops, dots and geometric patterns on the backs, and larger versions on her wrists.
She now works as a “hajicha,” replicating traditional designs for Instagram-connected customers.
“Different from tattoos” Although body art is still viewed with suspicion in Japan, younger generations are becoming more open to it.
However, according to Heshiki, hajichi should not become just another trend.
She researches patterns in art-related books before offering traditional patterns to Okinawans and takes the time to discuss the markings and meanings with customers.
Traditionally, hajichi was applied using a bamboo stick, charcoal-based ink, and the Okinawan liquor awamori. Heshiki uses regular needles and ink to poke the designs by hand.
Hiroaki Yamashiro, one of the most well-known photographers of hajichi, took pictures of dozens of elderly women sporting the body art starting in 1970.
The 73-year-old, a native of Okinawa’s Miyakojima, started the project almost by accident while he was a student when he was looking for subjects and came across an elderly woman.
Philip FONG / AFP “She had hajichi, and a very graceful look,” he told AFP. At his studio in Naha, Okinawa prefecture, strips of film shot by photographer Hiroaki Yamashiro sit atop a lightbox.
Up until 1990, he took pictures of about 30 women wearing hajichi, including a 107-year-old woman who still remembered how painful it was to get the markings done.
For the purpose of cooling them, “She had to put her swollen hands in a bucket of soybean pulp left over from making tofu.”
Although Yamashiro applauds the resurgence of hajichi, he is of the opinion that it should not be reduced to merely a fashion statement.
“This is a culture that only Ryukyu women practice, and it is very different from tattoos.”
He hopes that future generations will “retain the Okinawan culture, way of thinking, and identity” and be “even more proud” of being Okinawan.