Kohki Sato (HoriKage)
Since I was a child, I’ve been skilled with my hands. I loved drawing, making things, and Japanese calligraphy, although I hated using an abacus.
As long as I can remember, creating things has brought me great joy.
I am the second of three boys born into a working-class family: my grandfather was a war veteran, my grandmother was a fisherwoman, my father was a fire fighter and my mother was interested in traditional Japanese dance. I grew up in comfort, surrounded by nature in Iwate prefecture. Most of my memories are of being outside playing baseball, riding my bike, and fishing.
I’ve always enjoyed tinkering with mechanical things. Back then I rode around on a motorbike I’d helped build. My early experiences tinkering helped me, and still help me, with the mechanics, construction and upkeep of tattooing machinery.
Although when I decided to become a tattoo artist, it was mostly because I thought it was cool.
After graduating junior high school, my interest in tattooing began to emerge. I started to study what I could by myself but grew frustrated. I realized that I’d been over-optimistic in my thinking, teaching myself was too hard. I entertained hopes of being taken on as someone’s apprentice. It was then that I got a tattoo of a “Shouryuu” dragon on my back and the full impact of my actions and desires hit me.
In 1996, at Speedy’s Tattoo Studio in Yugawara, Kanagawa, I became an apprentice to the honorable Mr. Horitatsu, the man who’d given me my first tattoo. Three years passed as his pupil before he named me worthy of being his successor. I consider him to be my master. My days in intense study were trying, some days I only got through by promising myself I’d pack up and leave the following day…but I preserved.
After that I studied an additional two years in Sendai, Miyagi in order to achieve my dream of independence and self-sufficiency.
Five years passed in earnest study and I returned to my first master. Even now, as I look back on the past, I am greatly aware of what I gained in collaboration with such great, authoritative teachers and masters.
I was self-centered but I think that the obligation I felt towards my master was the sole reason I was able to grow up. It was from there that I, recklessly, set out on my own journey.
Around 2001 I became one of the original staff members at the Purple Lotus studio in Shibuya. The many customers I met with and worked with back then helped build the foundation for opening my own studio later. In those days I also participated in many tattoo events and all sorts of media involved with tattooing. My days were full of work and little else. I started to feel increasingly out of place and unsure of things.
Was I a tattoo machine? Human? An Artist? I was so busy that I became unsure of everything.
To release myself from this confusion I briefly stepped away from the scene and set aside my tattooing.
What is art? What is it to be a craftsman? What does it mean to tattoo?... The incessant questions did not stop, nor did I find the answers in that painful time, but I become determined to establish my own studio, one which would allow people creative flexibility and stylistic growth.
In 2003, I became a studio owner and opened Rin-kg studio, in Daikan-yama (Shibuya, Tokyo),
on a street over-flowing with all kinds of artist.
I actively participated in many domestic and international tattooing conventions where I gained experience and won many awards. My offers abroad increased as I prepared myself to better present tattooing to the domestic media of Japan. The humanity and the rich nature of tattoos, the skill, speed, quality, and hygienic nature of good tattooing, all of these things are at the root of what I wanted to present to people, as well as the safety, the joy, and the refinement involved with creating tattoos.
As a craftsman, I feel a natural duty to perform at the best of my technical and creative ability and to always be focused on the next step of the process. At any given time it is important to me to challenge myself and to gain more experience and knowledge. Instead of happiness or perfection, I believe that challenge is the highest reward one can receive.
At times I have felt shackled by clients I have worked with in regards to styles or preconceived ideas, but through concentrating on the artistry of technique, my mind and heart become tranquil and I am able to face the task at hand, whatever it may be. It is after times like this that I’ve developed and grown, it can’t all be fun.
In regards to tattooing as an art, on the highest level I feel there needs to be a balanced trinity of design, spirit/heart/mind, and technique.
Instead of imprisoning myself in a style or genre, in order to continue to explore earnestly and without restraint I want to have the grace be open and receptive to everything. Yutori is the Japanese word I to use to describe this. It means having the space, time, room to expand and grow… a flexibility of self… that I think is absolutely essential to have and to continue to maintain.
Frankly, lazy self-complacency and lack of tribulation does not make for great men.
For finding what is real, what is false, and where the boundaries lay…I believe in honesty, no mater what. I recognize that, each day, we determine our own path in life. In doing so, you have ask who you want to be and to aspire to that. To live on hope and aspirations, that can’t be a bad thing, can it? For me, my hopes and aspirations are synonymous with tattoo.
I think of my responsibility, in tattooing and being a practitioner of the art of tattoo, to be a practical and positive example. I think about influencing the body piercing and tattoo (body modification) industry in regards to these important aspects. To try, with what is important to me, to pay respect to those around me and in my environment. I want to be a man of character. This, without forgetting to enjoy myself, is what I want to focus on.
Thank you.
KOHKI
12
