Irezumi: Notes on D. H. Lawrence's Fascination with Japanese Male Bodies

入れ墨 
Getting ink done Japanese style

Children born with congenital abnormalities are relatively few in number and the mortality rate amongst such infants is very high. It's for this reason that most sideshow freaks are in fact individuals who have gone to great lengths to place themselves outside of the norm and make themselves exceptional.

This includes those who have enhanced their appearance with extensive tattooing, such as John Rutherford, for example, who became the first professional tattooed Englishman after returning home in 1828 from New Zealand, where he'd had his body covered with Maori designs. Rutherford would regale his audience with tall tales of having been shipwrecked and then abducted by native peoples, who only accepted him once his flesh was decorated like their own.        

Or like the Albanian Greek known as Captain George Constentenus, a 19th-century circus performer and famous travelling attraction, who claimed to have been kidnapped by Chinese Tartars and tattooed from top to toe - including hands, neck and face - against his will. His almost 400 tattoos included many animal designs and Constentenus became the most popular (and wealthiest) of all the tattooed exhibit-performers.     

Or, finally, like the anonymous Japanese character in D. H. Lawrence's little-read novel The Lost Girl (1920), whom Alvina Houghton takes something of a shine to, along with other circus types:

"Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all over, and had the most amazing strong wrists [...] Queer cuts these! - but just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a distance.
      She wished she could jump across the distance. Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his buttocks. He was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour - that is, his tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermillion: as for instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's jaws over the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. - He told her how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her." 

There are two things I'd like to comment on in relation to this astonishing passage - neither of which, surprisingly, are picked up on in the explanatory notes provided by the editor of the Cambridge edition of the text, John Worthen. 

Firstly, it's interesting that Lawrence seems to have some knowledge of (and fascination with) irezumi, i.e., the traditional Japanese art of tattooing with a distinct style evolved over many centuries.

Indeed, tattooing for spiritual as well as aesthetic purposes in Japan can be traced back to the Paleolithic era, though it only assumed the advanced decorative form we know today during the Edo period (1603-1868), thanks in part to a popular Chinese novel illustrated with colourful woodblock prints showing heroic figures decorated with flowers, tigers, and mythical creatures. 

Amusingly, scholars are divided over who first wore these elaborate tattoos; some argue that it was the lower classes who defiantly flaunted such designs; others claim that the fashion for irezumi originated with wealthy members of the merchant class, who, prohibited by law from displaying their weath, secretly wore their expensive tattoos beneath their clothing.  

Either way, the fact remains that irezumi is a slow, painful and expensive method of tattooing, that uses metal needles attached with silk thread to wooden handles and a special ink, called Nara ink, that famously turns blue-green under the skin. Irezumi is performed by a small number of specialists (known as Hori-shi) who are revered figures within the skin-inking community.

Usually, a person skilled in the art of Japanese tattooing will have trained for many years under a master; observing, practicing (on their own skin), making the tools, mixing the inks, etc. Only when they have mastered all the skills required and learnt to copy their master's technique in every detail, will they be allowed to tattoo clients.

Finally, it's worth noting that during the Meiji period (1868-1912) the Japanese government outlawed tattooing and irezumi was forced underground, becoming associated with criminality; yakuzi gangsters have always had a penchant for traditional all-over body designs - just like Alvina Houghton.  

Indeed - and this is my second point - Lawrence, who, as a writer, often indulges in racial fetishism, also seems to have a thing for the flesh of Japanese men, whether tattooed or untattooed, as we learn from the famous wrestling scene in Women in Love (1920) ...  

Gerald suggests to Birkin that they might indulge in a round or two of boxing. The latter, however, isn't so keen on the idea of being punched in the face by his physically bigger and much stronger friend and suggests, alternatively, that they might do some Japanese wrestling (by which he seems to mean jiu-jitsu).

He explains to Gerald that he once shared a house with a Jap in Heidelberg who taught him a few martial art moves. Gerald is excited by the idea and immediately agrees to it, suggesting - with a queer smile on his face - that they strip naked in order to be able to properly get to grip with one another, man-to-man.    

Of course, Birkin doesn't take much convincing of the need for this; quickly conceding that you can't wrestle in a starched shirt. Besides, he sometimes fought with his Japanese opponent naked, so it was no big deal.

This piece of information piques Gerald's bi-curiosity and he asks Birkin for details. The latter explains that the man was "'very quick and slippery and full of electric fire'", before adding: "'It is a remarkable thing, what a curious sort of fluid force they seem to have in them, those people - not like a human grip - like a polyp.'"

Gerald nods, as if he understands perfectly what Birkin means: "'I should imagine so,' he said, 'to look at them. They repel me, rather.'"

To which, Birkin replies: "'Repel and attract both. They are very repulsive when they are cold, and they look grey. But when they are hot and roused, there is a definite attraction - a curious kind of full electric fluid - like eels.'"

Again, to me, this is an astonishing exchange in which there is so much to unpack in terms of racial and sexual politics, that it's quite laughable that the editors of the Cambridge edition only think to inform us in an explanatory note that electric eels, whilst certainly capable of giving a shock, do not, in fact, contain 'fluid'.

I mean, I'm as interested in the biology of the Gymnotus as the next man, but, as a reader of Lawrence, I'm rather more interested to know whether Birkin's vital being interpenetrated his Japanese opponent in the same way it interpenetrated Gerald's; "as if his fine, sublimated energy entered into the flesh of the [other] man, like some potency".

Did Birkin entwine his body with the body of his Japanese opponent with a "strange, octopus-like knotting and flashing of limbs" until the two bodies were clinched into oneness?

Did Alvina ever jump across the pathos of distance that lay between her and the tattooed Oriental  who looked so shabby dressed in cheap, ill-fitting European clothes, but so beautiful naked: "Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders, the serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?"

I think we should be told ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 119, 120.

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 268-69, 270.