I have become a little fixated on 'collecting' images of unusual faces for a personal sketchbook challenge I have set for myself this August and wanted to share this fascinating picture.It was in a 20 year old copy of National Geographic magazine that I found in a charity shop last week. Originally taken in 1922 but never published it shows a young girl from the Ainu people of Japan.
The Ainu traditionally tattooed moustaches on their daughters by rubbing soot into small knife cuts. An account from 1893 states '' It is begun with a small semi circle on the upper lip when the girl is only two or three years of age and a few incisions are added every year until she is married''. This practice was banned by the government at the turn of the 20th century but more effective than the law , was assimilation. The aboriginal Ainu lived in the far north before most of them were forced to relocate to more densely populated areas like Hokkaido. That, plus intermarriage with ethnic Japanese helped tattooed moustaches fall out of favour.
6 comments:
How horrible to do that to a child and she looks rather scary doesn't she? Glad it has fallen out of fashion now.
What a horrible thing to do to your child, and especially to inflict pain from such a young age. I wonder who thought up the 'idea' in the first place? Maybe they should have picked on the 'blokes' of the village?!
I really feel for the girl in this picture.
Dan
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Ouch!
Still, in years gone by, women would never have imagined the piercings/tattoos that females here would be having done in the future......
Isn't it interesting what is seen a 'beauty' by some cultures. The world is becoming homogenised now.
That said, I wouldn't care to do that to a perfect unblemished child's face!
I was fascinated to learn that the back of a woman's neck is traditionally considered to be very very sexy in Japan! Think of the Geisha with her hair up and kimono collar pulled down at the back. They also enhance the hair line at the back with painted lines.
Celia
Just read your comment on Jeanne's blog - we could team up and bore people rigid about British moths and wild flowers ;-)
What a strange practice. You could perhaps understand if they had done this to the boys ... but girls ...? most odd. It brings to mind the barbaric practice of foot-binding young girls in China, before it was banned during the 1940s. I remember seeing an article with photographs - it made me feel quite nauseous.
Jeanne
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It seems men and women have been disfiguring themselves with piercings, tattoos, scarring and the insertion of bits and pieces in all sorts of places since time immemorial. Girls and women often seem to come off the worse and nothing has really changed even these days!
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