Archive Note
Keone Nunes is a leading figure in the revival of Hawaiian kakau, the indigenous hand-tap tattooing tradition that was suppressed in the wake of the 1820 missionary period. He was born in 1957 (Iwate Ken, Japan per Hawaii Magazine; raised in Wai'anae on O'ahu from early childhood) and built his practice from the 1990s onward through archival research at the Bishop Museum, Hawaiian-language source work, and direct hand-tap training under the influence of the Sulu'ape family, specifically Su'a Sulu'ape Paulo II of Samoa and Auckland. He founded the Pauhi training school in Wai'anae in 2001. Nunes relocated to Thailand in 2020 and was a documented featured performer at the Sawasdee Bangkok Tattoo Show on 18 to 19 October 2025. A 2024 death claim that circulated in tertiary web summaries is false; he remained active and publicly documented in 2025.