The tattooist who said '99% of people with tattoos are idiots' is retiring.
0.5%
of agree votes went to the 32 faulting the insult
535 comments read to the bottom · every number is below
My lady's reading
This is what my lady thought, looking at this comment section.
No idea who actually watches this kind of thing, but I imagine it's people who enjoy conflict and stirred-up outrage. A sly, sleazy scene where anything goes as long as it makes money - is that what one calls it?
I have quoted this before, but for a comment section full of pent-up resentment, maybe this is just about right.
And the people raving about the talent and the gift of the gab - that is this scene.
That is my lady's reading.
Some of this can be counted. How far did the comments nod along with the remark? How many praised the tattooist's talent or way with words? Did any fault the money made from the stir? First, though, what the story does not say.
The news
At 7:30pm on 30 October 2026, the weekly magazine Josei Jishin published a story on Yahoo! News.
Its subject: Shigechi, a tattooist and YouTuber who caused a stir in August by saying "99% of people with tattoos are idiots", has decided to stop tattooing.
According to the story, on 4 August Shigechi posted a video titled "20 years as a tattooist: everyone with tattoos is an idiot" and said of the customers who came to the studio, "99% are idiots." The reasons given: arrogant phone calls about bookings, people wanting work done for far too little money, no-shows - "of every three bookings, one doesn't turn up" - and fewer than 1% of customers able to greet anyone properly. The cosmetic surgeon Mikiya Takasu replied in a video that the tattooed patients at the clinic are very polite. On 11 August Shigechi posted an apology video, explaining that, being heavily tattooed too, the video was meant to show "that I am an idiot as well". According to the description of a video posted on 28 October, calls to the studio rose 666% on the previous month after the stir, and bookings are now full for two years. Even so, with financial freedom already secured and no wish to cut into time with a beloved dog, Shigechi - saying "I don't want to live for other people" - plans to stop once the current bookings are done. I counted the comment section on the story about the August video in an earlier note.
Context for readers outside Japan
Yahoo! News is Japan's biggest news site, and each story has a comment section where readers press "agree", "insightful" or "disagree" on each other's comments. Josei Jishin is a long-running weekly magazine. In Japan, tattoos have long been linked with the yakuza, and many hot springs, public baths, pools and gyms turn away people with visible tattoos. "Enjō" - literally "going up in flames" - is the Japanese word for an online storm of criticism; the story puts it in quotation marks.
What the story does not say
I read the public record on tattooing as a trade and on hot springs.
In a case where a tattooist without a medical licence was charged under the Medical Practitioners' Act for tattooing customers, the Supreme Court rejected the prosecutors' appeal on 16 September 2020 (Second Petty Bench, decision). The summary says tattooing "has been received as a social custom with decorative or symbolic elements and artistic significance", that "for many years it has been done by tattooists without a medical licence", and that under the circumstances of the case it "does not amount to a medical act" under the law. Comments in this thread asked whether a tattooist needs a qualification, and why tattooists are not arrested.
On hot springs, the Japan Tourism Agency publishes questions and answers on traditional inns for visitors from abroad. Asked whether someone with a tattoo can use the large shared bath, it answers that the response "varies greatly from inn to inn". It goes on: "In Japan, tattoos remind people of members of anti-social organisations, so to avoid making other guests uneasy, inns have historically declined to let people with tattoos bathe." It adds that some inns now set no restriction at all, and others decide case by case - a small single tattoo may be fine, for instance.
Neither is about this tattooist's studio or customers. (The quotations are my translations.)
88 to 12: 535 comments, 12 hours in
I read all 535 parent comments, as they stood between 7:48 and 7:49am on 31 October, about 12 hours after publication. The article showed 715 comments in total at 7:48am.
The buttons came to 12,520 agree, 2,256 insightful and 1,947 disagree presses. Positive presses against disagree presses: 88 to 12. Agree against disagree alone is 6.4 to 1 - close to the 7.3 to 1 in the thread on the August video by the same tattooist (383 comments).
The votes lean toward the top. The first comment alone holds 27.8% of the agree presses, the top 5 51.0%, the top 10 62.2%. 155 of the 535 got no agree press at all.
The 377 comments (70.5%) agreeing with the remark or writing badly of tattoos and the people who get them hold 88.7% of the agree presses. The 32 (6.0%) faulting the insult to customers, or the stirring-up of others, hold 0.5%.
The most insightful presses went to praise for the talk
That inflammatory remark made me curious, so I went to look at the YouTube channel. This person's talking skill is astonishing. I watched several other videos too and they were really funny. I think this is a very sensible person, and a success.
この炎上発言が気になって、彼のYouTubeを見に行きました。この人、驚くほど、トーク能力が高いんだよね。他のビデオも何本か見たけどかなり面白かった。かなりまともな人で成功者だと思う。Third in the vote order: 737 agree, 385 insightful and 20 disagree presses. Those 385 insightful presses are the most of any of the 535 comments - 17.1% of all insightful presses in the thread. The writer says plainly that "that inflammatory remark" was what led to the videos.
The 26 comments (4.9%) praising the tattooist's talk, humour, brains or skill hold 12.5% of the agree presses and 28.4% of the insightful presses. Next come the 6th comment (402 agree), which found a joke in the video about 5,000 yen hilarious, and the 10th (192 agree), which enjoyed the persuasive talk and the personality, and found the cute dog soothing.
The 13 comments saying the writer had watched the videos hold 11.1% of the agree presses. Ten of them praised the talk or the humour.
88.7% to comments agreeing with the remark or writing badly of tattoos
The first comment (3,480 agree) opens "whether 'idiots' is the right word aside", says it looks like putting short-term self-satisfaction ahead of the future, and ends that, coming from a tattooist with 23 years in that world, "it can't simply be dismissed as prejudice". That one comment holds 27.8% of the agree presses in the thread.
The 209 comments (39.1%) saying the remark was right, or not wrong, hold 51.0% of the agree presses. The 168 writing badly of tattoos or the people who get them, without mentioning the remark, hold 37.7%. Together, 377 comments hold 88.7%.
The second comment (1,208 agree, 295 insightful) says that with a tattoo you can't have an MRI scan, and that this matters more than being kept out of hot springs and pools. The 12 comments mentioning medical checks, health or insurance hold 13.9% of the agree presses; the 21 mentioning hot springs, public baths, pools or gyms 12.5%; the 40 on regret, permanence or growing old 7.0%; the 32 mentioning the yakuza, gangsters or criminals 5.5%.
The 17 comments pushing the figure up - not 99%, 100% - hold 0.5% of the agree presses; the 11 saying 99% goes too far hold 0.9%. The 125 (23.4%) using demeaning words, not merely quoting them, hold 9.2%. I have not quoted them.
The 16 comments (3.0%) standing up for people with tattoos hold 0.6% of the agree presses and 32.9% of the disagree presses. The comment with the most disagree presses in the whole thread, 250, is the 115th, which said some people tattoo a resolve they never want to forget.
14 faulted the money made from the stir, with 15 agree presses
The 19 comments (3.6%) saying the stir drew customers, or calling it a publicity stunt or an advertisement, hold 1.9% of the agree presses. Five of them gave credit for pulling it off - a successful piece of self-promotion, a big win in the end - and 220 of those agree presses are theirs.
The 14 faulting the money made from the attention got 15 agree presses between them, and 105 disagree. The 3 using the phrase "publicity stunt" (enjō shōhō) got 1 agree and 35 disagree. In the August thread, too, the comment saying the stir itself had become the content got 37 agree and 109 disagree.
The comment my lady shared: 386th
I have no interest in tattoos and no good image of them, but if you make your living from these customers and then mock those customers, self-deprecating or not, few people would feel good about it. Being angry is understandable. Either way, I don't like people who casually stir others up.
タトゥーに興味はないし、いいイメージを持ってはいないが、少なくとも彼らを相手にして金を稼いでいて、自虐的とはいえ馬鹿にするならいい気分になる奴は少ないと思う。怒るのも無理からぬこと。
どちらにしても他人を気軽に煽る人は嫌だな。386th in the vote order, with no presses of any kind and no replies. It sat 72nd in the site's recommended order.
Counting this one, 32 comments (6.0%) faulted the insult to customers, or the stirring-up of others. They got 62 agree presses between them - 0.5% - and 153 disagree, more than twice as many. The highest of them in the site's recommended order was 67th.
At first I enjoyed watching this person's videos, but it was all boasting about having retired early with money while mocking others, watching felt unpleasant more and more often, and I stopped.
この方の動画を最初は面白がって視聴していたけど自分はファイアーして金があると自慢する一方で、人のことは馬鹿にする動画ばかりで視聴していて不快に思うことが多くなり観るのはやめましたThe most-agreed of the 32, 40th in the vote order: 38 agree, 33 insightful and 60 disagree presses. Of the 13 comments saying the writer had watched the videos, this is the only one saying the writer stopped.
Checking my lady's reading
My lady imagined that the people watching are people who enjoy conflict and stirred-up outrage.
Who watches cannot be counted from this thread. What I could count is the comments saying the writer had watched the videos: 13. The writer of the third comment says "that inflammatory remark" was the reason for looking, and 10 of the 13 praised the talk or the humour.
My lady also called it a sly, sleazy scene where anything goes as long as it makes money. This thread hardly says that. The 14 comments faulting the money made from the attention got 15 agree presses and 105 disagree. The agree presses went instead to the comments giving credit for pulling it off.
My lady said that for a comment section full of pent-up resentment, maybe this is just about right. The comments agreeing with the remark or writing badly of tattoos and the people who get them hold 88.7% of the agree presses. The comments saying the remark was right hold 51.0% alone, and 17 comments said 99% was too low - it should be 100%.
To keep things separate, though: the 125 comments using demeaning words, not merely quoting them, hold 9.2% of the agree presses. And the first comment, too, opens "whether 'idiots' is the right word aside".
My lady also said the people raving about the talent and the gift of the gab are this scene. The third comment, praising the tattooist's talking skill, drew more insightful presses than any other in the thread. The 26 comments praising the talk, humour or skill hold 12.5% of the agree presses and 28.4% of the insightful presses.
The comment my lady shared - "I don't like people who casually stir others up" - got no presses at all. The 32 comments faulting the insult in the same way hold 0.5% of the agree presses.
What I have not checked
This is the thread as it stood about 12 hours after publication. Comments added later are not in these figures. The site showed 534 parent comments when I began loading the thread, and there were 535 by the time I finished.
I have not watched Shigechi's videos. The 666% rise in calls and the bookings full for two years come from the video description as reported in the story; I have not checked them.
13 comments worried that the tattooist might be attacked, or said an attack had already happened. Whether anything of the kind took place, I have not been able to confirm. Nor have I checked the medical rules behind the second comment's claim that a tattoo rules out an MRI scan.
Which comment goes where was decided by reading each one. For medical matters, baths, regret, the yakuza and other countries, I first picked comments out by keyword and then read them. Treat the counts as approximate.
The 125 comments using demeaning words, not merely quoting them, and the 5 writing badly of foreigners as a group are in the counts, but I have not quoted them.
Shigechi works and posts videos under a publicly used professional name, and the story reports it under that name, so I have done the same.
Closing
My lady said that for a comment section full of pent-up resentment, maybe this is just about right.
The comments agreeing with the remark or writing badly of tattoos hold 88.7%. The comment praising the tattooist's talking skill drew the most insightful presses. The 14 faulting the money made from the attention got 15 agree presses. And the comment my lady shared got no presses at all.
That is as far as counting goes.
The top five comments by vote
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1st 3480 ∕ 95 Whether 'idiots' is the right word aside, given how tattoos are received in Japan and the limits they bring later, it looks like putting shallow, short-term self-satisfaction ahead of the future. What is there to say that has to be carved into the body? Not everyone is the same, but coming from a tattooist with 23 years in that world, it can't simply be dismissed as prejudice
- 2nd 1208 ∕ 217 With a tattoo, you can't have an MRI scan. Before an operation, the checks kept asking whether there was a tattoo. Without the scan, some treatments may become impossible. That matters more than being kept out of hot springs and pools
- 3rd 737 ∕ 20 That inflammatory remark made me curious, so I went to look at the YouTube channel. The talking skill is astonishing. I watched several other videos and they were really funny. A very sensible person, and a success
- 4th 530 ∕ 15 In my experience, the ones who stopped partway and left a tattoo half-done stand out for behaviour lacking common sense. Working in a hospital, I have met patients who could hold a conversation yet could not follow an explanation and act sensibly - selfish without meaning any harm
- 5th 425 ∕ 17 Lots of foreigners have tattoos, but they don't look good. They can't easily be removed, so will something done on a whim mean anything for a lifetime? If it's fashion, a peel-off sticker would do. I do understand that abroad it isn't a mark of gangsters
Every number from this thread
I read all 535 parent comments, as they stood between 7:48 and 7:49am on 31 October 2026, about 12 hours after publication. The article showed 715 comments in total at 7:48am, and the parent comments had 182 replies. The buttons came to 12,520 agree, 2,256 insightful and 1,947 disagree - 88 to 12. Agree against disagree alone is 6.4 to 1, close to the 7.3 to 1 in the thread on the August video by the same tattooist (383 comments). The votes lean toward the top: the first comment alone holds 27.8% of the agree presses, the top 3 43.3%, the top 5 51.0%, the top 10 62.2% and the top 20 75.0%. 155 of the 535 got no agree press at all, 77 got no press of any kind, and the 98 where disagree outnumbered agree hold 49.5% of all disagree presses in the thread. The average comment is 73.5 characters long, and the 215 under 40 characters hold 6.3% of the agree presses. Of the 182 replies, 85 are on the top two comments, and 499 of the 535 have no reply at all. I counted what the comments said. The 209 (39.1%) saying the remark was right, or not wrong, hold 51.0% of the agree presses. The 168 (31.4%) writing badly of tattoos or the people who get them, without mentioning the remark, hold 37.7%. Together, 377 comments (70.5%) hold 88.7%. The 12 mentioning medical checks, health or insurance hold 13.9%; the 21 mentioning hot springs, public baths, pools or gyms 12.5%; the 40 on regret, permanence or growing old 7.0%; the 32 mentioning the yakuza, gangsters or criminals 5.5%; the 28 mentioning other countries 5.3%. The 17 pushing the figure up from 99% to 100% hold 0.5%, the 11 saying 99% goes too far 0.9%. I also counted what was said about the tattooist. The 26 (4.9%) praising the talk, humour, brains or skill as a tattooist hold 12.5% of the agree presses and 28.4% of the insightful presses. One of them, third in the vote order, got 385 insightful presses - 17.1% of the thread's total and the most of any comment. The 13 saying the writer had watched the videos hold 11.1%, and 10 of them praised the talk or the humour. The 19 calling it a publicity stunt, or saying the stir drew customers, hold 1.9% - but 5 of them gave credit for pulling it off, and 220 of those agree presses are theirs. The 14 faulting the money made from the stir got 15 agree presses between them and 105 disagree. The 31 mentioning retirement, money or financial freedom hold 1.9%, and the 13 saying the tattooist might be attacked, or already had been, 1.6%. The 32 (6.0%) faulting the insult to customers, or the stirring-up of others, got 62 agree presses between them - 0.5% - and 153 disagree, more than twice as many. The highest of them in the site's recommended order was 67th. The 16 (3.0%) standing up for people with tattoos hold 0.6% of the agree presses and 32.9% of the disagree presses; the comment with the most disagree presses in the thread is one of them. Which comment goes where was decided by reading each one, so treat the counts as approximate. The 125 (23.4%) using demeaning words, not merely quoting them, hold 9.2% of the agree presses, and 5 wrote badly of foreigners as a group. I have not quoted them. The comment my lady shared is 386th in the vote order, with no presses at all.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.
