Tebori – Traditional Japanese Methods
It is worth noting that the very word ‘Tebori’ itself can literally be translated as ‘to carve, sculpt or inscribe.’
Tools for Japanese tattoo methods were first made with sharpened bamboo to serve as needles, graduating to steel needles as time progressed. The entire tool itself is closest in appearance to a pen, with a long narrow bamboo handle and the needle sitting at the tip end. Single or multiple needles can be used. To use the tool, an artist will dip it in ink and push the needle manually into the skin – stretching and supporting skin with one hand, pricking with the other. Specific hand rhythms and movements were and are employed to give gradations and specific shadings.

Masters of the skill still practice in the modern day, and often have the seemingly paradoxical advice to offer that tattooing should be done with careful, ‘gentle’ puncturing. Their methods are wholly unusual when compared to modern tattoo machine usage – consider that the handle-with-needles tool is held by the tattooist from the far end, whereas a modern machine is held very close to the needle, in much the same way as one would grip a pencil.

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