TAKI “RYUDAIBORI” KITAMURA

When I first became aware of Taki’s work, I didn’t yet understand what tattooing could be. It was about twenty years ago. I was on the waiting list for a booth at a tattoo convention in San Francisco when someone didn’t show up. I was given the vacant space, right in the center of the floor, surrounded in all four directions by tattoo legends…and the booth beside me turned out to be Taki’s.

Nervously introducing myself to the man who wrote ‘Tattoos of the Floating World’ and ‘Bushido: Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo’ was not the easiest thing I did that weekend. He wasn’t unfriendly, and not cold either; he simply seemed to have his sights fixed on a horizon I didn’t yet know how to look for… It took years to understand the real weight of what he was doing. Taki wasn’t just tattooing, he was documenting, preserving, and quietly shaping the cross-cultural memory of our craft.

Through books, exhibitions, and most of all relationships, he has built a bridge between generations, between oral knowledge and recorded history, between Japanese tradition and the global tattoo community. Because of him, the world has learned to see - and respect - the art and craft of tattooing more deeply.

For me, his path represents something not only rare, but truly one of a kind in our generation. He continues to reveal that tattooing can be work of the hands, the mind, the heart, and the spirit. And that we could be both craftspeople and thinkers, makers and stewards of this work.

Having Taki create the cover for Issue V feels like closing a long arc, honoring one of the people who helped define the ground we now stand on, and offering his voice directly to those still trying to understand what tattooing truly is. 

— Jeff