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The tattoo question, and who banned what
The sign says 入れ墨お断り, and the reason given is organized crime: 暴力団 membership has long been marked in ink, an operator cannot check a membership list, and visible tattoos are the proxy they use instead. Enforcement is uneven — a city 銭湯 may not care, a 日帰り温泉 usually does, a ryokan often handles it quietly the way this 女将 does. When the tourism agency surveyed inns and hotels with baths in 2015, more than half said they turned tattooed guests away, and it asked operators to think again ahead of the events that were coming. If you have ink, the workable answers are to telephone first, to book a 貸切風呂 or a room with its own bath, or to cover a small piece with a タトゥーシール. What makes the rule strange is the history behind it. Tattooing was itself illegal for Japanese nationals from 1872 until the Occupation lifted the ban in 1948 — and the same reforming state had already set about ending the traditions it found at its two edges, prohibiting the lip tattoos of Ainu women in 1871 and the ハジチ, the hand tattoos of Okinawan women, in 1899. Those are the next two lessons. The country that now turns away a tattooed bather spent a century telling tattooed people to stop.