Five years ago, Japan Times contributor and author Brian Ashcraft, writing for Kotaku East, noted how many athletes at the Rio Olympics had tattoos and speculated that the 2020 Games might change Japanese attitudes toward them.
“Over the past few decades, tattooing’s image in Japan has slowly been softening and evolving,” he wrote. “Tokyo 2020 will bring competitors, fans and money into the country. But we’ll have to see if it brings changed attitudes.”
If these changed attitudes included tattoos on Japan’s own team of athletes, then Ashcraft’s hopes were premature. At least for events in which extensive amounts of an athletes’ skin were exposed — swimming, diving, track and so on — scant evidence of tattooing could be found.