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PRODID:-//Seattle Art Museum//Events Calendar//EN
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UID:whats-on/events/saturday-university-why-get-a-japanese-dragon-tattoo-may-9@sam.org
DTSTAMP:20260429T013941Z
DTSTART:20260509T210000Z
DTEND:20260509T223000Z
SUMMARY:Saturday University | Why Get a Japanese Dragon Tattoo?
DESCRIPTION:Welcome to Saturday University\, a monthly lecture series featuring experts
  from around the world. Gain new insights on Asia throughout time as our vi
 siting scholars\, authors\, artists\, and thought leaders delve into new th
 emes each season. Tickets include gallery access.\nWhy Get a Japanese Drago
 n Tattoo? An Enduring Image of Cross-Cultural ExchangeSherry Fowler\nWhere 
 does the mysterious hybrid creature of a Japanese dragon come from and what
  has led so many to have its form permanently marked on their skin? This ta
 lk will consider dragon imagery alongside the history of tattooing in Japan
  with its synergistic relationship to Edo period (1615-1868) print culture 
 and its long-standing associations with outsider identities.\nWhen it becam
 e illegal for Japanese people to get a tattoo in the late-nineteenth centur
 y\, tattoo artists were allowed to continue their artistry on foreigners vi
 siting Japan\, many of whom chose dragon tattoos as souvenirs. After World 
 War II\, US soldiers stationed in Asia enthusiastically embraced this tradi
 tion to return home with dragon tattoos. Now\, as the visibility and accept
 ance of custom tattooing has reached new heights around the world\, thanks 
 to the pioneering efforts of artists like Horiyoshi II and Ed Hardy\, the d
 ragon image maintains an exalted position within the plethora of new possib
 ilities available for tattoo designs.\nSherry Fowler is Professor of Japane
 se Art History at the University of Kansas. She has a PhD in Japanese art h
 istory from UCLA. Her newest book is Buddhist Bells and Dragons: Under and 
 Over Water\, In and Out of Japan (University of Hawai'i Press\, 2025) and o
 thers are Accounts and Images of Six Kannon in Japan (2016) and Muroji: Rea
 rranging Art and History at a Japanese Buddhist Temple (2005). Other public
 ations include “Japanese Buddhist Sculpture” with Yui Suzuki for Oxford Bib
 liographies in Art History (2022) and “Drawing Embodied: Ed Hardy’s East As
 ian Art Connections” with Dale Slusser\, in Ed Hardy: Deeper than Skin: Art
  of the New Tattoo (2019). She has research interests in pre-modern Japanes
 e sculpture\, East Asian bells\, pilgrimage prints\, foreign interactions w
 ith Japanese art\, issues of collecting\, and ritual. She is currently work
 ing on Buddhist/Christian exchanges in sixteenth-century Japan.
LOCATION:Seattle Asian Art Museum\, 1400 E Prospect St\, Seattle\, WA 98112
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