| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject | Masao Miyazaki (Horitsune III) |
| Type | Person |
| Era | Contemporary |
| Location | Osaka · Japan |
| Date | 2014 CE |
| Style / Technique | Osaka Horitsune-lineage Japanese irezumi, machine outline with tebori color |
| Connected to | Horitaka (Takahiro Kitamura), Japanese Irezumi, Tebori Technique |
Archive Note
Masao Miyazaki, who tattoos under the name Miyazo, is a master of traditional Japanese tattooing based in Osaka, Japan. He trained under the Osaka master Horitsune II and works inside the Horitsune lineage, a Kansai region line celebrated in the wabori community for its handling of background clouds and wind bars, the mikiri, and for shading that builds light and shadow across a whole piece. That training was the long, rigorous classical kind, the apprenticeship that comes before a tattooer is trusted to carry anything forward.
Following that apprenticeship Miyazaki was chosen to inherit the master's name and title, becoming Horitsune III. In Japanese tattooing the Hori prefix translates to "to carve" or "to engrave," and a master grants it only when the disciple has mastered the technical skill, the cultural iconography, and the depth the lineage demands. The name is handed down, not adopted. That transfer is what the title Horitsune III actually records.
Miyazaki works both sides of the tool question. He uses the electric tattoo machine for his outlines, the sujibori, and for the major shading blocks of his large-scale designs. For color and delicate shading he turns to tebori, the traditional hand method, in which a narrow wooden or metal shaft, the nomi, carries a bundle of needles bound to the tip and is pushed by hand into the skin. Machine for the frame, hand for the saturation. The split lets him move efficiently while keeping the texture and density that only hand-poked color gives.
He works from his private studio in Osaka, known as Myz Tattoo. His large-scale, full-body designs, the munewari and the soushinbori, draw on classical Japanese art, mythology, and Buddhist iconography, built around the established motifs of the tradition: dragons, tigers, deities, and seasonal flora. His public statements about the work keep returning to structure, the basic forms, the kata, and the traditional layout rules that hold a composition together.
That insistence on basic forms is how he reached a wider audience. Miyazo appeared in the travel and tattoo documentary series Gipsy Gentleman, hosted by the artist Marcus Kuhn, serving as a representative of Osaka's distinct tattoo culture and walking through the importance of kata and traditional layout. Osaka has its own register inside Japanese tattooing, separate from the Yokohama and Tokyo lines, and Miyazo became one of its faces on screen.
In 2014 he was selected as one of seven internationally recognized artists for the exhibition Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in a Modern World. The show was curated by Takahiro Kitamura, who tattoos as Ryudaibori and earlier as Horitaka, and photographed and designed by the artist Kip Fulbeck. It premiered at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles in 2014 and traveled to museums abroad, putting the Osaka Horitsune line in front of audiences who would otherwise never see it.
What the record holds is a tattooer working the seam between two eras. Miyazaki carries a named Osaka lineage handed to him by Horitsune II, keeps the hand method for the part of the work that needs it, and accepts the machine for the part that does not. The Perseverance show framed exactly that position, the bridge between the historical discipline of Japanese tattooing and its modern, globalized form. Horitsune III is one of the figures holding that bridge from the Osaka side.