The popularity of tattoos today is a revival of a practice begun in the late eighteenth century, when Westerners first made contact with the native peoples of the Pacific. The term ‘tattoo’ entered Europe with the publication of Captain Cook’s voyages in the 1770s, and Pacific tattoos became fashionable in the West as sailors, whalers and explorers brought home tattoos from Tahiti, the Marquesas, New Zealand and Polynesia. In recent years these early contacts have been revived, as native tattooists from Oceania have begun tattooing non-Polynesians in Europe, the USA and elsewhere. Tattoo is both a fascinating book about these early Oceanic–European exchanges, that also documents developments up to the present day, and the first to look at the history of tattooing in Oceania itself. Documenting these complex cultural interactions in the first part of the book, the authors move from issues of encounter, representation and exchange to the interventions of missionaries and the colonial state in local tattoo practices. Highly illustrated with many previously unseen images, for example the original voyage sketches of the first Russian circumnavigation of 1803–6, this is a fascinating account of early tattooing and cultural exchange in Oceania, and will appeal to the wide audience interested in the history of tattooing.

本書は刺青の通史を超え、皮膚という境界線を巡る文化衝突と融和のドラマを鮮烈に描きます。クック船長の航海から現代の復興まで、ポリネシアの伝統がいかに西洋と交錯したか。そこには他者への憧憬と支配が入り混じる、人間心理の深淵が克明に刻まれています。 未公開のスケッチが放つ迫力は、文字を持たぬ文化が身体に託した不屈の誇りを物語ります。抑圧を越えて蘇る文様の美しさは、自らのルーツを刻み直そうとする根源的な衝動を突きつけ、読者の魂を揺さぶります。身体を地図として読み解く、真に知的な冒険譚です。