The Ainu process of tattooing is a painful one. The tattoo marks are usually done with the point of a knife; not with tattooing needles, as by the Japanese. Many incisions are cut nearly parallel to each other. These are then filled with cuttlefish-black. Sometimes smoke-black mixed with the blood from the incisions is used instead. On the lips the operation is so painful that it has to be done by instalments. It is begun with a small semicircle on the upper lip when the girl is only two or three years of age, and a few incisions are added every year till she is married, the moustache then reaching nearly to the ears, where at its completion it ends in a point. Both lips are surrounded by it; but not all women are thus marked. Some have no more than a semicircular tattoo on the upper lip; others have an additional semicircle under the lower lip; and many get tired of the painful process when the tattoo is hardly large enough to surround their lips. The father of the girl is generally the operator, but occasionally it is the mother who "decorates" the lips and arms of her female offspring. Besides this tattooed moustache, a horizontal line joins the eyebrows, and another line, parallel to it, runs across the forehead. The tattoo could not be of a coarser kind. A rough geometrical drawing adorns the arms and hands of women, the pattern of one arm being often different from that of the other. Frequently only one arm is tattooed. I never saw tattoos that went further than the elbow, neither did I see any other part of the body tattooed. The four specimens given in the illustration show the patterns most usual in different tribes, though each individual has some slight variations.
Fig. 1 was copied by me from the arm of a woman at Frishikobets (Tokachi River); Figs. 2 and 3 are the two arms of Kawata Tera, a girl of Tobuts (north-east coast of Yezo); and Fig. 4 is the left arm of a girl at Piratori.
TATTOO-MARKS ON WOMEN'S ARMS.
It will be noticed that in the regions where the Ainu have come in contact with Japanese, rings are tattooed round the fingers, while the Tokachi Ainu women have none. In the two arms of Kawata Tera (Figs. 2 and 3) the dissimilarity of the two patterns is very marked at first sight, but on a close examination it is easy to perceive that the operator meant to carry out the same pattern on the right arm as on the left; only through his incapacity to reproduce correctly his former lines, or for other reasons, he got muddled up in the design, and left his work unfinished. If all the lines in the upper half of Fig. 3 were continued, the design would be very similar to Fig. 2.
Tattooing is considered an ornament, besides, as I have already mentioned, adding the coveted air of "virility" to women. There is no religious feeling connected with it, and the practice is rapidly dying out, as the Japanese men make fun of the Ainu women, who after all only tattoo their mouths and arms, while they themselves often tattoo the whole of the body. The Ainu have no rules as to when the girls are to be operated on. They are done both before and after marriage, contrary to what has been said, that the women do not tattoo themselves after they have become wives. The moustache is generally finished before a girl gets married, as she herself is anxious to be thus decorated; but there are no rules as to virginity or marriage, for the arms and hands are as often tattooed after marriage as before. Indeed, in the Ainu country, "tattooing" one's wife seems to be one of the pleasures of the honeymoon. The design of these tattoos is meant to be, but is seldom, symmetrical. The Ainu apparently execute these designs on a preconceived plan, but the results rarely come up to expectation, as no drawing of the design is prepared beforehand. The bluish-black colour of the tattoo is very permanent and strong, and many an Ainu woman is disfigured for life, who, according to our ideas, would otherwise be good-looking.
SNOW-SHOES.