Now it is time for a short tattoo design lesson. Flash is the term used for the pictures of designs that come in sets, and are purchased by a tattooist from an artist. These are the pictures you see on the walls when you walk into a tattoo parlor. Designs used to focus on nautical, patriotic, romantic, and religious themes. Nowadays, tattoos show more death, horror, grotesque images, mythological creatures, and fantastic images. The basic styles of tattoo designs are black and gray, traditional, fineline, tribal, realistic , custom , or Irezumi. According to Tom Ball of Tatunka Tattoo, the most common tattoo right now is the tribal sun and its variations. The tribal sun has replaced dolphins and roses for women, as well as skulls for men. 

Although I find Irezumi uninteresting and ugly, it seems to be an integral style to the tattoo community. Irezumi is the Japanese art of  tattooing using traditional bamboo and steel needles, and occasionally an electric tattoo machine. The Yakuza peasants in Japan  were forbidden to wear embroidered clothing because of their social status. They invented this style of tattooing so they could decorate themselves without going against Japanese law. Irezumi usually covers large portions of the body, mainly the back, arms, buttocks, and legs. 

Swirling patterns, deep perspective, great detail, and gradual shading characterize Irezumi. The designs themselves focus on the values of patience, courage, perseverance, generosity, and loyalty. They are very personalized and individual to the wearer of the tattoo. The pain is horrible, it is very expensive, it is done by hand, and takes a very long time to complete. Irezumi is a very dangerous style of tattooing. Some inks in Japan are laced with cocaine; the most popular ink (red) contains cadmium which is 
poisonous; because the tattoos cover so much of the body the skin becomes less porous and cannot sweat as easily