Archive Note
The Sanguozhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms), compiled by the Western Jin historian Chen Shou (233 to 297 CE) around 297 CE, contains the earliest written record of tattooing among the peoples of both Japan and Korea. In fascicle 30 of its Book of Wei, the Account of the Eastern Barbarians, the account of the Wa (the early Japanese) states, in the canonical Tsunoda and Goodrich translation of 1951, that "men great and small, all tattoo their faces and decorate their bodies with designs," explaining the practice as a protective charm for divers against large fish and waterfowl that later became ornamental, and noting that patterns varied by chiefdom and rank. The same fascicle records, in its Byeonhan section, that the men and women of the southern Korean confederacies, being near the Wa, also tattooed their bodies. A single Chinese text is thus the first narrator of tattoo custom for both of its neighbours. The textual references are well established; the practices are another matter. The Japanese practice is partially shadowed by the contested reading of incised Jomon figurines but has no surviving 3rd-century skin, while the Korean reference rests on this text alone, with no archaeological corroboration and no mention in Korea's own oldest histories. Two cautions: the text anchors Wa tattooing to a Chinese precedent, the son of the Xia king Shao-k'ang enfeoffed at Kuaiji, not to Tai Bo of Wu; and "Wajinden," the name for the Wa account, is a modern label, not a 3rd-century chapter title. The relevant Book of Wei is the section of Chen Shou's Sanguozhi, not the separate 6th-century Weishu of the Northern Wei.