Japan rethinks tattoo ban to boost recruitment in defence forces

The defence forceof Japanhasbeen rethinking removing the ban on tattoos as it is making efforts to increase recruitment from a rapidly shrinking population.

For a long time, tattoos have been a taboo in the nation and are often linked to mafia-like criminal gangs which are popularly known as yakuza. These criminal gangs carry elaborate skin art on their body.

However, officials have stated that Japan's youth have been getting these tattoos done for sartorial reasons and hence, they must not be identified as yakuza.

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The officials have further argued that the ban is hindering enlistment. The country's military Japanese Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) is 10 per cent short of its troop capacity and couldn't meet its recruitment target last April, stated officials,

"Rejecting applicants just because they have tattoos poses a problem in terms of enhancing the human resources base," Masahisa Sato, governing Liberal Democratic Party's MP, said recently.

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Head of the defence ministry's personnel bureau Kazuhito Machida said that they must reconsider the ban on tattoos, taking into account the country's declining birth rate.

In 2022, the country of 125 million recorded less than 800,000 births, which was less than two million in the 1970s. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated that it is a "now or never" situation for the country to address its ageing and shrinking population.

Japan under pressure to fillvacancies in JSDF

This situation has further increased pressure on the country to fill vacancies in the JSDF as it is doubling its spending on military, in response to the nuclear arsenal of North Korea and the growing might of China.

Japan has also been facing enduring calls to revise its post-war pacifist constitution so that it is capable of responding to the increasing tensions in the Asia-Pacific, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

It is still unknown when the government will take a final decision, however, scholars said that there was an era when tattoos were common in Japanese culture.

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A cultural anthropologist at Tsuru University Yoshimi Yamamoto, who has been studying the culture of tatoo in Japan and Taiwan, said that encounters of Japanese with Europeans in the 1800s changed that.

"Civilized Europe" considered the full-body tattoos on the people of Japan as "backward", because of which people covered up the ink, except during religious festivals, said Yamamoto, in an online lecture in 2019.

"Tattooed people are feared almost automatically," Yamamoto said.

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