Last night I happened to watch What's Wrong With Me!? (私の何がイケない？ - airs Tuesdays on TBS at 7pm), a variety program modern women. And I thought it might be interesting when I saw the topic of the episode: tattoos.
Right off the top, however, I was immediately disappointed. The show was initially presented as a debate between the pro and anti-tattoo groups, but within seconds it turned into a format for the host, Makiko Esumi (江角マキコ) and a gaggle of elders to mock and scorn a bunch of young girls who happened to decide to get tattoos.
They presented the usual anti-tattoo arguments you hear in Japan - tattoos are what yakuza wear, you'll regret it one day, people won't want to hire you, you won't be able to swim in public pools - and blah blah blah, without anything but a few slim seconds for the girls to try to make their counter-argument which of course they all fumble at, probably because they're all normal people being browbeaten into submission by famous TV personalities they probably admire.
It was really sad to see this kind of stuff happen on TV. At the end of the show after being shown shots of how painful and expensive it is to get tatts taken off and all the other reasons, one of the pro-tattoo girls, now almost reduced to tears said she was thinking she probably won't get any more. It made me want to punch the screen.
What did the show accomplish by making her feel bad? Her and the other girls all had a lot of obvious tatts that would be hard to completely cover up. But most of them seemed intelligent enough that I'm pretty sure they thought about it and all the consequences and then decided to get inked.
And yes, there are people out there who will scorn you for what you do to your body. And yes, visible tattoos will probably make it harder to get some jobs.
But isn't the real problem not the tattoos? Isn't the real problem that people get discriminated against for something they decided to do to their own bodies? The show never really addressed this at all. And that's just sad. That's the real debate, IMO, not whether tattoos themselves are good or bad.
It was also sad to see them mention how it might be hard to get a job in city hall if you have tatts (obviously in reference to Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto and his recent anti-tattoo witch hunt); but did they ask the real questions: is it OK for the government to even ask if you have tattoos? If they aren't visible, what the hell does it matter?
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