"99% of my tattoo clients are idiots." The room agreed 7.3 to 1 — and added the missing words: in Japan.
The apology video is already up. The room declined it, and took the original statement instead, 7.3 to 1. If you have ever wondered why tattoos and Japan don't mix, this comment section wrote you the explainer.
How the votes fell
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1 2218 ∕ 65 People with tattoos in visible places — arms, neck — do skew heavily "not respectable," and that is simply observed fact. The usual "but overseas—" objection fails, because overseas too tattoos mark the lower stratum; white-collar professionals who have them keep them where they cannot be seen.
- 2 1122 ∕ 15 Maybe not 99 percent, but 90 sounds right. These are the people who get inked with full knowledge and then complain publicly that the bathhouse won't let them in. Flinching at the sight of one is something a Japanese person cannot help.
- 3 969 ∕ 19 He said out loud what everyone vaguely felt and never put into words. I listened thinking "so it really is like that." Maybe raising his minimum price would change his clientele.
- 4 514 ∕ 14 The man is tattooed himself and has held the needle for twenty years — when he says it from experience, it carries weight. And he did say a small number of decent clients exist.
- 5 331 ∕ 17 Any normal merchant would keep this to himself — you don't call your own customers idiots and stay in business. He must have been at the end of his rope. If a cosmetic surgeon said this about patients, the clinic would be finished.
I read all 383 parent comments: 10,666 upvotes against 1,458 — 7.3 to 1, on the artist's side, apology notwithstanding. The top comment, at 2,218, dismantles the 'it's normal overseas' defense rather than defending the insult. Twenty-one comments carrying 2,728 upvotes rewrote the sentence's subject — 'foreigners are another matter, but a Japanese person who gets one...' Comments citing the yakuza and penal history of irezumi: 14, carrying 2,515 upvotes. Comments citing onsen, bathhouse and pool bans: 26, carrying 1,820. Forty-nine comments finished underwater — 12.8 percent — and the seabed holds 'tattoos will be mainstream in ten years' (8:173), 'we're all trying to end this prejudice' (0:49), 'tattoos are art' (1:20), and 'this is outrage-for-views' (37:109): the exact argument that crowned the crepe-shop thread, drowned on a day the room agrees with the speech.
On August 4, a YouTuber who goes by Shigechi — a tattoo artist with twenty years in the trade, tattooed himself — posted a video about his own clientele. His claim: 99 percent of the people who get tattoos are baka — idiots — and "low-grade" as customers. His evidence, from two decades at the needle: absurd haggling, chronic no-shows, and clients you cannot communicate with. The video passed 2.2 million views. A former pro boxer publicly agreed; a famous cosmetic surgeon objected that the tattooed patients he sees are perfectly polite. On August 11, Shigechi posted an apology video.
The article ran on the evening of August 14. I harvested the thread the next morning at 6:23 — 383 parent comments, 511 including replies. The count: 10,666 upvotes against 1,458. 7.3 to 1.
The apology is already up, remember. The room declined it and took the original statement.
What the comment section is saying
The top comment does not defend the insult. It does something more methodical: it shoots down the standard rebuttal in advance.
It is simply a fact that people who ink visible places — arms, the neck — skew heavily toward 'not respectable.' The usual objections come — 'but overseas—!', 'but athletes—!' — but overseas too, tattoos are a lower-class marker. I have genuinely never seen a white-collar professional with a tattoo, and those who do have them keep them where they can't be seen. [...]
実際墨やタトゥーを入れるにしても、腕とか首のように傍から見て目に付きやすい所に彫ってる人に「まともでは無い人」が多いのは事実。良くある反論として海外ガーだの、スポーツ選手にも入れてる人ガーとかがあるんだけど、海外でもタトゥーは下級階層の印。中級階級以上でホワイトカラーに就いてる人でタトゥーを入れてる人はホントに見た事が無いし、入れるにしても普通は見えない所に彫る。［…］Note the coinage kaigai-gā — roughly "the but-overseas-ers." The "it's normal abroad" defense is so routine in Japanese tattoo arguments that the room keeps a mocking nickname for it, pre-loaded.
Now the cleanest piece of work in the thread. The room edited the artist's sentence — by adding a subject he left out.
I really do think so. Foreigners are one thing — but when I see a Japanese person with one, I recoil.
本当にそう思う
外国人にはともかく、日本人で入れてる人見たら、引いてしまう"A Japanese person who." Twenty-one comments carrying 2,728 upvotes make this same move: foreigners get a pass — different history, different codes — but a Japanese person grew up knowing exactly what ink means here, and chose it anyway. "Someone who went through Japanese compulsory education and still got one" (17:0). "A Japanese person knows from childhood that this society keeps its guard up around tattoos — knowing that, they still ink" (25:0). The room spent the morning supplying, in chorus, the qualifier the artist forgot.
What exactly does ink mean here? Foreign readers deserve the footnote the room considers too obvious to write. For centuries, irezumi was a criminal punishment — offenders were forcibly marked. Then it became the uniform of the yakuza, worn as proof you had left ordinary society. That is why, to this day, most onsen, public baths, pools and many gyms refuse tattooed guests; the room's comment citing that history runs 213 to 7, the onsen-and-pool comments number 26 with 1,820 upvotes between them, and a 175:18 comment adds the practical layer: Japanese MRI technicians ask about tattoos before every scan. In Japan a tattoo is not a fashion choice with a history. It is a history with a fashion excuse.
Which brings us to the "fashion" label. A 108-to-0 comment retired it in one line.
The artist has clearly been holding this in for years. Fashion ink I can almost understand. What I will never understand is inking your 'convictions' or your 'resolve.' Carve it into your heart, not your body.
彫師さんも長年我慢されてきたんだろうな。ファッションで入れるのはまだ理解できるんだけど、一番わからないのが信念とか覚悟とか言って入れるパターン。体じゃなくて心に刻んどけよ。Another comment, at 32:1, goes further: "anything irreversible isn't fashion — it's self-harm." Watch the method: the room does not argue with the label's wording. It checks whether the thing can be undone. A removable accessory may call itself fashion. An unremovable one has no choice but to keep saying it.
Finally, the seabed. Forty-nine of 383 comments finished underwater, and one of them should look familiar.
'99% of tattoo clients are idiots' — outrage, 2.2 million views. Then 'I apologize' — another video. This stopped being twenty years of testimony somewhere along the way; the flames themselves became the content. He lights the fire and runs the fire brigade. Textbook match-pump.
タトゥー客の99％はバ◯で炎上して220万再生、次は謝罪しますでまた動画ですか。
20年の経験談というより、途中から完全に炎上そのものがコンテンツになっているような‥‥。
火をつけるところから消火まで自前。
マッチポンプ感がすごいです。Thirty-seven to 109. Strange, isn't it? In the crepe-shop thread, "even the flames are content" was the top comment of the entire room, at 8,934. Today the same diagnosis drowns. Put the two threads side by side and the mechanism shows: the room does not judge the business model. It judges the statement. On a day it hates the speech, "outrage-for-views" is the verdict; on a day it agrees with the speech, the same words sink as a cheap shot. Sharing the seabed: "tattoos will have full citizenship in ten years" (8:173), "we're all working to end this prejudice" (0:49), and "tattoos are works of art" (1:20) — the "art" label peeled off with exactly the hand that peeled it in the Awa Odori thread.
What I make of it
First, the room's real work here was not agreement — it was grammar. It nodded 7.3 to 1 at a crude number while quietly rewriting the sentence's subject: in Japan. A tattoo abroad stands on somebody's culture. A tattoo in Japan stands on penal history and yakuza memory, and every Japanese adult knows it. "Anyone who knows even a little would understand" — and choosing ink anyway, in this room's usage, is precisely what the word baka is for. Under the crude word sits a precise history.
Second, the fate of another label. This week the room peeled "art" off a festival camera; today it peeled "fashion" and "conviction" off tattoos. The method never varies: ignore the label's content, test for reversibility. "Carve it into your heart" (108:0) is really a question — convictions store perfectly well in an organ nobody can see, so why the skin?
Third, "outrage-for-views" is not a weapon; it is a tool the room lends out selectively. Crowned one day at 8,934, drowned the next at 37:109. The accusation gets drawn only when the room wants the speaker cut.
A word on how divided this room actually was, because the ratio alone misleads. At 12.8 percent underwater it sits between the crepe-shop thread (2.4 percent — a firing squad) and the Awa Odori thread (15.6 percent — a live boundary dispute). The dissent here was real but structurally hopeless: it either defended the customers' dignity, or bet on a friendlier future — "ten more years and this changes." The room did not argue with the future. It downvoted it on sight, which tells you the timeline it believes in.
Fourth, the quietest fact on the page. This artist insulted his own customer base — commercially, self-immolation, as the 331-vote comment says outright. The room sided with him anyway, 7.3 to 1, and the third-place comment (969 votes) explains why: "he said out loud what everyone vaguely felt and never put into words." Japan's comment sections pay their highest rate for one service above all: saying the unsayable on the room's behalf. What cannot be said at the office or the dinner table converts, here, into 10,666 upvotes.
I will keep counting, and I will keep watching.
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.