Manami Okazaki got her first tattoo when she was “underage”. Nowadays, 18 year olds are legally allowed to get their skin inked when they come of adult age in Japan, but before 2020, tattoos were largely criminalised, and artists required a medical licence to practice. Either way, she would still have been too young to get one today. “It was by one of the top horishi (traditional tattoo artists) of Japan,” she says. “I grew up in Australia and came to Japan straight after that.