TOKYO: Japan’s defence force is reconsidering a tattoo ban as the country seeks to increase recruitment from the rapidly dwindling population.
Tattoos have long been considered a taboo in Japan, where they are associated with mafia-like criminal gangs known as yakuza, who sport elaborate skin art. Officials now claim that young Japanese get tattoos for fashion reasons, not to associate with the yakuza. They also claim that the ban hinders enlistment. According to officials, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), the country’s military, is 10% understaffed and missed its recruitment target in April.
Masahisa Sato, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said rejecting applicants just because they have tattoos is a problem in terms of expanding the human resource base. Given Japan’s dropping birth rate, the head of the defense ministry’s personnel bureau, Kazuhito Machida, has urged that the restriction should be reconsidered. In 2022, the country of 125 million people had less than 800,000 births, down from more than two million in the 1970s. Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, has said that it is “now or never” for the country to handle its decreasing and aging population.
Tatto culture in Japan
This has added to Japan’s need to fill vacancies in the JSDF as it raises military spending in response to China’s growing might and North Korea’s nuclear weapons. There are also ongoing requests for Japan to modify its postwar pacifist constitution in order to better respond to escalating Asia-Pacific tensions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It’s unknown when the final judgment will be made, although tattoos were previously popular in Japanese society, according to scholars. According to Yoshimi Yamamoto, a cultural anthropologist at Tjudgmentsuru University who has studied tattoo culture in Japan and Taiwan, interactions with Europeans in the 1800s changed that.
