| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject | Horikitsune |
| Type | Person |
| Era | Contemporary |
| Location | London · United Kingdom |
| Date | 1995 CE |
| Style / Technique | traditional Japanese wabori (irezumi) |
| Connected to | Horiyoshi III, Horitomo, Japanese Irezumi |
Archive Note
Alex Reinke began tattooing in 1995. He carried a European name and a European base, and he set out to learn the one tradition that does not hand its name to outsiders easily. He traveled to Japan across the 1990s and 2000s to study wabori, the traditional Japanese style, at the source.
The turn came under Yoshihito Nakano, known as Horiyoshi III, of Yokohama. Reinke was taken on as a direct apprentice and given a Hori-name, Horikitsune, which means "Carving Fox." That name is the credential. In the irezumi lineage a master grants the Hori-prefix only when he judges the student fit to carry the line, and Horiyoshi III granted it to very few Westerners. Eva McCormack's record of Horiyoshi III's former apprentices lists nine canonical names, and Horikitsune is one of them.
His place in that lineage puts him beside the others Horiyoshi III trained. He is a peer of Horitaka and Horitomo, the same school, the same master, the work measured against the same standard. The apprenticeship under Horiyoshi III is documented on both sides, the master's list and the student's own record, and it concluded around 2015.
The craft he transmits is wabori in full, the large-scale body suit built on traditional rules of placement, color, and subject. He runs Holy Fox Tattoos between studios in Germany and London, United Kingdom, carrying a Yokohama lineage into Europe rather than diluting it into generic commercial flash. In 2018 he opened a tebori-ya, a store supplying the traditional Japanese hand tools used in tebori, the hand method, so that the equipment and not only the imagery would travel with the tradition.
He also built the record around the work. From 2009 to 2015 he ran his own publishing house, Kofuu Senju Publications, later renamed KOSEI Publications LTD. Through it he co-authored limited-edition books on irezumi, including "Kokoro" and "Dentouwaza," with the photographer Matti "Horimatsu" Sedholm. The books document the imagery and the spiritual dimension of Japanese tattooing for an audience outside Japan, the same bridging work as the studio and the tool store, in print.
The spiritual side is not a metaphor for him. In 2011 he was ordained as a lay-monk of the Rinzai-Zen order, tying the religious tradition that sits behind much irezumi subject matter to his own practice. That ordination, the Hori-name, the publishing house, and the tool store all point one direction, toward transmitting the whole of the tradition and not just its surface.
The significance of Horikitsune is that of a Westerner admitted into a closed Japanese lineage who then spent his career holding the line on it. He promotes authentic irezumi by the traditional rules and resists its drift into generic commercial imagery, a working bridge between the Yokohama school of Horiyoshi III and the European clients who come to him for it. The record here is VERIFIED, drawn from Holy Fox Tattoos, the McCormack apprentice list, and the publishers' listings for his books.