Tattoos are by nature fleeting, a living art form that dies with the body which serves as its canvas. But a new book manages to pin down the Japanese practice of irezumi, or traditional tattooing, by drawing on an unlikely source: 19th-century woodblock prints. “Tattoos in Japanese Prints", by Sarah E. Thompson, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, … [Read more...] about The tattooed hipsters of 18th-century Japan