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Shige
Yellow Blaze Tattoo
Interview by Horitaka
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Shige of Yellow Blaze Tattoo in Yokohama,
Japan, has emerged as one of the foremost
tattooers in the world, not just of the
Japanese style, but of all styles. I’ve had
the pleasure of getting to know Shige very
well, from working conventions together
to just hanging out, and am proud of his
success and truly feel that he is advancing
the art of tattooing. We just tattooed
together at the Asian Art Museum of San
Francisco as part of a groundbreaking
demonstration of Japanese tattoo art
and Shige has definitely come a long way
from his humble beginnings. Starting as
a broke motorcycle mechanic to a self
taught tattooer, he has dealt with a lot of
negativity to get where he is. Now, world
renowned, booked for years, with more
first place trophies than he can count,
he still remains a mystery to many tattoo
artists and collectors. I wanted to share
with the readers of Tattoo Artist Magazine
some of Shige’s thoughts on the art of
tattooing for I think it is important to
delve into the psyche and motivations
of one of Japan’s finest tattoo artists.
In many ways, I see Shige a lot like my
master in his younger years; Horiyoshi III
used to run around the world, tattooing,
showing his bodysuit as well as those of
his clients and being more than just a
hard working tattooer, but an ambassador
of Japanese art.
-- Horitaka, 2008
Horitaka: Can you give me your basic
history?
Shige: Well, I was born in 1970 in
Hiroshima; I was a first born son. My
mother was very strict about education;
she was very patient and never gave up.
For a while, I lived with my mother and
sister, my sister often took care of me. I
wasn’t allowed to have “normal” toys, and
as far as TV, only educational programs like
nature shows! So I focused on hobbies and
reading, things like that. I do think these
“restrictions” helped me with my ability
to concentrate and also made me more
creative. My mother painted as a hobby
and I think this definitely had an effect on
me. She also recommended that I draw
for fun. I was also interested in playing the
guitar when I was younger; I even started
music school after high school but didn’t
stay very long. I worked some odd jobs
and then ended up getting married at 20. I
eventually became a Harley mechanic, and
through the biker culture I was exposed to
tattoos; I was really curious about it, and
soon my interest was for tattoos more than
bikes. I’ve always been a bit impulsive
and really wanted to tattoo myself and
get into it. When I began all this- maybe
it was around ‘95- I was tattooing friends
at night. You hear about people that become
tattooers overnight and it wasn’t like that
for me! I knew nothing, I bought machines
from abroad and studied what I could but I
had no guidance. In Japan there weren’t the
magazines, shops and suppliers that there
are today. Information was hard to obtain.
I guess it was somewhat of an experiment,
I looked at foreign magazines and learned
what I could. Things didn’t work out with
my wife and we got divorced. This was a
very rough time for me, no money, getting
divorced, but now I think it was meant to be.
I met Chisato at this time and we fell in love.
Anyways, I continued to work on tattooing,
out of my house, and I was getting some
clients. I was able to set up a studio in June
of 2000. Things really changed when I met
Filip Leu...
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