e gallant and strong the more they indulged in it; and that those
who omitted it were sneered at--which gives us still another motive
for tattooing--the fear of being despised and ridiculed for not being
in fashion.

TATTOOING IN JAPAN

Many more similar details might be given regarding the races of
various parts of the world, but the limits of space forbid. But I
cannot resist the temptation to add a citation from Professor
Chamberlain's article on tattooing in his _Things Japanese_, because
it admirably illustrates the diversity of the motives that led to the
practice. A Chinese trader, "early in the Christian era," Chamberlain
tells us, "wrote that the men all tattoo their faces and ornament
their bodies with designs, differences of rank being indicated by the
position and size of the patterns." "But from the dawn of regular
history," Chamberlain adds,

"far down into the middle ages, tattooing seems to have been
confined to criminals. It was used as branding was formerly
in Europe, whence probably the contempt still felt for
tattooing by the Japanese upper classes. From condemned
desperadoes to bravoes at large is but a step. The
swashbucklers of feudal times took to tattooing, apparently
because some blood and thunder scene of adventure, engraven
on their chest and limbs, helped to give them a terrific air
when stripped for any reason of their clothes. Other classes
whose avocations led them to baring their bodies in public
followed--the carpenters, for instance, and running grooms;
and the tradition remained of ornamenting almost the entire
body and limbs with a hunting, theatrical, or other showy
scene."

Shortly after 1808 "the government made tattooing a penal offence."

It will be noticed that in this account the fantastic notion that the
custom was ever indulged in for the purpose of beautifying the body in
order to attract the other sex is, as in all the other citations I
have made, not even hinted at. The same is true in the summary made by
Mallery of the seventeen purposes of tattooing he found. No. 13 is,
indeed, "to charm the other sex;" but it is "magically," which is a
very different thing from esthetically. I append the summary (418):

"1, to distinguish between free and slave, without reference
to the tribe of the latter; 2, to distinguish between a high
and low status in the same tribe; 3, as a certificate