gold-leaf

日本のタトゥー、「入れ墨」について書かれた記事です。

Forbidden Ink: Japan’s Contentious Tattoo Heritage

From starkly rendered waves crashing over a shoulder to a stern samurai warrior wielding a sword on one’s back, the striking designs expressed in Japanese tattoos are among the most iconic in the world of ink.

The fact that Japanese tattoos have received “recognition in such major Western art museums as the musée du quai Branly in France and general popularity among tattoo enthusiasts abroad are surely a testament to their enduring appeal,” John Skutlin, a PhD candidate in the Department of Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told The Diplomat.

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Beyond the popular motifs of colorful koi and cherry blossoms mingling with tigers and dragons, tattoos also have deep roots among Japan’s indigenous Ainu people, as well as natives of Okinawa, The Japan Times points out. Ainu women, living mostly on the northern island of Hokkaido, have long etched designs onto their faces and arms using soot from the fireside, to keep evil spirits at bay and ensure a safe transition to the afterlife. And in Okinawa, it was also the women who traditionally marked their hands with a mix of ink and a strong local brew called awamori. Their tattoos served as talismans and had strongly shamanic undertones.
Yet despite Japan’s rich history of tattooing, the painstaking art form has never achieved mainstream acceptance on the islands. There are complex historical reasons for this. Further, there are fundamental differences between Japanese tattoos (irezumi — literally, “insert ink”) and their Western counterparts.

If one was to commit to a proper ink job in Japan, it could mean going as far as getting a full-body suit, extending from the back to the legs, arms, and chest. This would usually end at the neck, wrists and ankles so that “the ink could be shown when occasion permitted it,” Skutlin said. “It’s quite similar to Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Japanese aesthetic as described in In Praise of Shadows, where he describes traditional Japanese gold-leaf images, lacquerware, and folding screens that, if shown in bright light, are gaudy and even blinding, but when seen in the murky candle-lit dimness of a temple with its eaves keeping the sunlight at bay, a mysterious, mystical kind of beauty is revealed.”

（以下省略）

今回取り上げる単語は、gold-leafです。「黄金の葉っぱ」だと思ったのですが、全く違うものでした。

Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition Reserved, Oxford University Press) によると、 “gold that has been beaten into a very thin sheet, used in gilding”とのことでした。

『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版，大修館）で調べたところ、「（薄い）金箔」と載っておりました。またgold-foilで「（厚い）金箔」という意味だそうです。

leafの定義は「箔（foilより薄い）」、foilは「（食物包装用の）金属の薄片，箔，（料理用のホイル」とのことでした。（Gomez）