By Grace Liao
Special to the Oahu Island News

Tattoo. Depending on the listener’s age, experience, and culture, the word stirs diverse emotions. Young people today get excited by tattoos and view them with favor. Older people disapprove and are appalled by such youthful foolishness. Yet there are cultures where tattoos represent an essential spirit—the fundamental nature of a person—signifying rank, status, achievement and membership. Even the significant events of one’s life are captured on skin.

These are the kinds of tattoos proffered by a small downtown Honolulu studio where a rare tufunga ta-tatau, or tattoo artist, still creates traditional tattoos for those who are serious and committed.

“We create a new tribe,” said tattoo artist Aisea, whose studio is on the fourth floor at 1154 on Fort St. “Tattoo is a form of identity.”

In traditional Polynesia, individual behavior was regulated by a strict system of religious beliefs that included things kapu (or taboo) as well as things to be embraced. The elements of the system were often communicated via symbols that everyone recognized.

“Black is a symbol of mana—protective shield,” Aisea said. He was wearing a black T-shirt that read “Hawaiian strength.” The tattoos on his face, neck, torso, arms, and legs, he explained, reflect the concept of the tattoo as a protective device, common in many areas of Polynesia where the full body tattoo was believed to be a kind of armor.

Rick Lacar, a friend of Aisea and a tattoo artist himself, has a full bodywork of tattoos—head, face, torso, arms, legs and feet. Aisea used on his work on Lacar to demonstrate the process of traditional tattooing. This includes the tapping of the ink into the skin, combined with chants that envelope the subject with sacred protection.

Today, as times and medical knowledge has changed, music is played instead of chants, and magical protection is replaced with modern medicinal procedures.

“Even though we’re doing it the traditional way,” Aisea said, “we use modernized sterilization. People use to die from infections.”

Cushions are now carefully covered in plastic bags, and the area to be tattooed is washed with antibacterial soap. Aisea washed his hands and used latex gloves. To the uninitiated, Lacar with his whole body tattoo might seem intimidating, but he talks easily and brought laughter to the studio.

Aisea first shaved the hair from Lacar’s right thigh, then used a red indelible marker to sketch a pattern that mirrored the tattoo on Lacar’s left thigh.
With the traditional tapping, Lacar said, “the dead skin easily peels off, like a snake skin.” Traditional tapping requires a working group of at least three people: one to stretch the skin, one to tap, and a third to clean off the blood. Lacar’s and Aisea’s families gathered around the small studio to provide this assistance, and to bring warmth and encouragement as the sound of tapping begins. The traditional au (tattooing comb) and sausau (mallet used to tap the comb into the skin) are both made from wood.

“Use your palm instead of your fingers to stretch the skin,” Aisea said, explaining that fingers cause ripples.” Lacar said he wants to experience the ways of his ancestors, “to experience the olden days.” Aisea, while tapping, described how women were also tattooed, with the majority of the tattoo work done on the fingers, hands, tongues, and wrists, which appears to be spiritually based.

Slowly a pattern emerged, symmetrically identical to the one on Lacar’s left thigh. When he was finished, Lacar remained face down on the mat. Aisea cleaned the tools as one of his assistants disinfected Lacar’s thigh after it finally stopped bleeding. It would take time for Lacar to heal. His wife would help him clean and disinfect his tattoo every day, and help him to walk as the pain would be intense until healing began.

Aisea relaxed, sitting on a stool and smiling while looking at his work. Lacar laughingly asked when Aisea would be free to do his buttocks, the only place left un-tattooed. “Anytime,” Aisea replied.