| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject | Shige (Shigenori Iwasaki) |
| Type | Person |
| Era | Contemporary |
| Location | Yokohama · Kanagawa, Japan |
| Date | 1995 CE |
| Style / Technique | three-dimensional modern custom Japanese |
| Connected to | Filip Leu, Japanese Irezumi, Tebori Technique |
Archive Note
Shigenori Iwasaki, who works as Shige, is the Yokohama tattooer most associated with three-dimensional custom Japanese tattooing, a self-taught style that keeps traditional motifs but drops the flat surface of older irezumi. He was born in Hiroshima, Japan, in March 1970, a date verified on his Yellow Blaze studio biography and carried at HIGH confidence in the vault record. Before he tattooed he worked as a Harley-Davidson mechanic in Yokohama. By a separate interview account, recorded at lower confidence, he also taught guitar and had wanted to become a musician.
He taught himself. Shige began tattooing in 1995, practicing on friends at night while keeping his day job, with no master and no studio. In Japan that was a problem. He had bypassed the rigid master and disciple apprenticeship that traditional tattooers held as the only proper road, and by one interview account, held at lower confidence, they criticized him early for not respecting the culture. He worked through it anyway.
The turn came in 2000. Shige traveled to Switzerland and sat for his first tattoo from Filip Leu, the Swiss master, taking a full bodysuit over three months at the Leu family studio. He has described that stretch, in a Bishop Tattoo Supply biography, as the most important lesson of his career. Watching Leu work became his substitute for the apprenticeship he never served. He returned to Yokohama and, with his wife Chisato, established Yellow Blaze Tattoo Studio in 2000. The founding month is itself disputed in his own records. The Japanese version of the site lists July 2000 and the English version lists August 2000. The studio was incorporated in July 2003 as Yugen Kaisha Oen. He began showing at international conventions from 2001.
What made him distinct is depth. Shige built a three-dimensional custom Japanese style that holds the traditional subjects, Buddhist figures, folklore, clouds, and waves, and draws on ukiyo-e woodblock prints, but adds modern color gradients and perspective so the design flows with the wearer's anatomy. An exhibition profile in Galicia called him a virtuoso of the color palette with an exceptional sense of depth and flow. He defines the work, in his own words, as an original Japanese style on a traditional Japanese background.
The craft runs on machines, not hands. Where the older Yokohama tradition used tebori, hand-poking, Shige works entirely with electric tattoo machines and needle cartridges, and has designed custom needle configurations with Bishop Tattoo Supply and Da Vinci Needles. On October 2, 2008, he gave live demonstrations at the Matcha event at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where he spent 96 hours on Kazunobu Nagashima's back piece, a back that had won an award at the Milan convention in 2007.
The work also reached galleries and museums. From August 4 to 7, 2010, his work featured in BASARA at Spiral Garden in Aoyama, Tokyo, curated by Tenmyouya Hisashi, with an opening showcase on twelve people. He showed paintings at the ART OF TATTOOIST exhibition at the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse in December 2010, at Ghost Gallery at Vanilla Gallery in Ginza from February 7 to 19, 2011, and at Hitomakumi at TENGAI GALLERY in Tokyo in March 2013. From March 8 to September 14, 2014, he was one of seven artists in Perseverance at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, curated by Takahiro Kitamura with Kip Fulbeck. In May 2014 his large painting RINNE-Doujouji, glossed as Cycle of Reincarnation at Dojoji Temple, hung in Tatoueurs, Tatoues at the Musee du quai Branly in Paris, an exhibition that ran from May 6, 2014 to October 18, 2015 and also carried Filip Leu's work. In 2021 he designed, with No Regrets Tattoo Studios, an Oni demon under falling cherry blossoms for a custom Indian Motorcycle art-bike.
The record is set. In June 2009 his monograph SHIGE was published by State of Grace Inc. in San Jose, compiled by Takahiro Kitamura. From a self-taught start that the traditionalists doubted, Shige became the figure most associated with three-dimensional custom Japanese tattooing, a Yokohama studio founder who took the old motifs and gave them depth.