Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s “The Tattooer” tells a story of a young, skillful tattooer named Seikichi, who was famous for his “unrivaled boldness and sensual charm of his art” has a secret pleasure for inflicting pain on men while they are under his needle. “Shading and vermilioning – these are said to be especially painful – were the techniques he most enjoyed” (Tanizaki, 80). He even found himself trying to inflict more pain on the men who appear as if they are not fazed by his work.
Seikichi also had another desire to create a masterpiece on the skin of a beautiful woman. After years of waiting, he finally gets this chance to do so. But tattooing her was the complete opposite of how he felt when tattooing men. When he was tattooing males, I felt that he did not even worry about how his art work would turn out; inflicting pain was the bigger picture. Seikichi felt as if he were torturing himself as he applied the needle to the young girl’s skin. “At every thrust of his needle Seikichi gave a heavy sigh and felt as if he had stabbed his own heart” (Tanizaki, 83). Regardless of the pain, the young girl says she will do anything for the sake of beauty. In my opinion I believe Seikichi was more interested in how his art work would look on a beautiful woman, rather than constantly working on men. Maybe if he just tattooed women, he would have never taken pleasure in causing anyone pain. The only part of this story I found to be strange was how and why the tattoo of the spider wreathed in flames once she exposed it to sunlight.
