Tebori

The word Tebori comes from te meaning 'hand' and hori or horu, 'to carve, sculpt or inscribe.' The word used to describe the technique of tattooing that arose in the late 18th and early 19th century in Japan, with the appearance of professional tattoo artists in the capital city of Edo.

Tebori or traditional Japanese tattoo involves using a set of needles attached to the end of a handle made of wood or metal. The tattooist dips the needles in ink and creates a tattoo by pressing the needles rapidly and rhythmically into the skin. According to many tebori enthusiasts the hand method does not do as much tissue damage as is possible with an electric needle.

Tebori is just as safe as machine tattooing. Like any professional tattoo studio the needles and the handles are sterilized in an autoclave before they're used. Because this traditional method takes longer it tends to hurt more. But is a different type of pain. The one main drawback of tebori over a tattoo machine is that the modern method gets the job done a lot faster but then again a lot of people like pain and are happy sitting in a chair for hours taking it.

There are only a handful of artists in the United States at any one time that can do this traditional Japanese tattoo style. One of the hardest parts about learning tebori is not just the skill of making the tools but also getting your head around how to use them. It is made all the harder when most artists are conditioned to holding the tools at the tip the way you would hold a pencil. Whereas traditional Japanese masters of the technique hold the handle at its far end which is much harder. As a result the time factor time from being a tebrori apprentice to a fully fledged tebori master is so much longer than it would take a Western tattoo apprentice to learn the ropes.

There are 2 main types of Tebori tattooing. Tsuki-bori is a methodology of traditional Japanese hand tattooing that, according to the records of the Tokai Tattoo Club of Japan, is a reference to the "thrust" method of tattooing based in Osaka and western prefectures. Hane-bori is a reference to "sweep-up," a method of Tebori hand tattooing rhythms employed by artists of Tokyo and the Eastern Areas of Japan.
Often, the tsuki-Bori method is looked upon as a simplistic method of Tebori tattooing, less difficult to master than hane-bori.

Bokashi; the fading of black work used to graduate shading in traditional, often used in clouds and sword swipes.

Kakushi-bori; sometimes referring to tattooing near the armpits, on the inside of the thigh or in the private or "secret" places on the body, also the hiding of words in the petals of flowers.

Kebori; fine lines, such as, but not limited to, hair.

Keshow-bori; secondary images in order to support the other image.

Nijuw-bori; when an artist tattoos a traditional character in Tebori that was tattooed, the tattoos of that character must be correctly portrayed in the received tattoo.

Nuki-bori; to tattoo only the main image without the support of keshow-bori.

Suji-bori; outline of a tattoo, "Suji" meaning “line.”