[MUTSUO TATTOO ARTIST]
Three bukkako soba noodles.
-Tempura batter?
Please.
-Excuse me. Do you speak English?
I know a little English.
-You do? You'll probably think this is silly but...
...I think I got the numbers 40 and 14 mixed up.
-'Forty' means 40, right?
'Fourteen' is 14, and 'Forty' is 40.
-Oh, I said 'forty' when I meant 14.
Don't worry about it.
-I totally forgot how to say it.
-40 years ago, oh I mean 14 years ago...
-i said 'forty.' You think they understood?
Don't worry about it.
-It's so silly. A funny story.
[TATTOO AGE]
[MUTSUO]
[PRESENTED BY NEW ERA FLY YOUR OWN FLAG]
Mutsuo is Mutsuo.
Mutsuo's personality...
The closer I get to Mutsuo, the harder it is to understand him.
[MASA SAKAMOTO THREE TIDES OWNER] The closer I get to Mutsuo, the harder it is to understand him.
What kind of person is he?
He's a good man.
He takes tattooing seriously.
Mutsuo's been here for 12 years and tattooing for 10 years.
He's always on hand. He's part of the team.
Stand up first.
Kinda hairy.
-Cause I'm white.
Yes.
White people have thin hair, but they're hairy.
[CHRIS GARVER TATTOO ARTIST] I know a lot of people who are like,
"Oh, I'd love to work at Three Tides."
You know, they're a world famous shop.
It's got great artists.
It's gonna go down in history as one of those legendary shops.
I tattooed at Three Tides several times.
I went out there for the first time with Juan Puente
after they had the 1999 first tattoo convention in Tokyo.
The first Tokyo convention in 1999,
that was a pretty groundbreaking thing, especially for Japan
because Japan tattooing is not as open.
There wasn't, at that time, too much communication between artists.
Well, it was known that there was gonna be a really big international convention there.
That was a really big move.
When so many foreigners came over to Japan
and a lot of people wanted to stay
so a lot of the tattooers were invited to work at different shops
and I got invited to work at Three Tides.
When I went there the first time it was Horitomo.
He was Washo then.
Mutsuo was an apprentice.
He hadn't started tattooing yet.
I had tattooed Washo in 1991 in Philadelphia.
He didn't speak any English yet.
He came up to me and asked if I would tattoo a monster on him.
And that was basically the only thing he could say.
He's a mindblowing artist.
He's one of my favorites.
I think he's probably one of the best in the world.
Masa, he doesn't tattoo
but he is really good at running a shop.
It's a little bit strange for a tattoo artist to work at a shop
where the owner isn't a tattoo artist
but I think in Three Tides it really works.
He loves tattooing
and I think he wanted to elevate the art.
Three TIdes is one of the first Western style shops in Osaka.
It wasn't a street level shop.
It had like, a little sign and it was in an alley.
So, I mean, that was about as out in the open
a shop has ever been in Japan.
The initial goal of Washo and Masa was to make a shop
that could be like the best shops in America.
They wanted to help make the tattoo scene here in Osaka more popular.
Oh wait, this isn't it Can I have that one?
So Mutsuo joined Three Tides in 1999.
I've known him since when he didn't know a thing about tattooing.
He was watching us while the shop was in construction.
Basically, Mutsuo was one of Washo's (Horitomo's) first customers.
From the moment I decided to get one, it took about a month.
Honestly, I didn't feel guilty at all back then.
I just thought it looked cool.
At the time, I didn't have a clear desire to become a tattoo artist.
But I did want to find a job that had something to do with tattoos.
I used to work at a clothing shop, but I would come here after I was done to help out.
Masa and Horitomo, everyone probably knew that I wanted to be a tattoo artist.
When they asked me to officially help out there, I quit the clothing shop right away.
When I first started apprenticing, I really had no knowledge of anything.
There weren't any archives to go through back then, so I looked through foreign magazines.
I watched everyone do their work, and little by little I gained some knowledge.
Mutuso didn't really have one master or one teacher.
Everyone who came to work at Three Tides taught Mutsuo.
He learned from our guest and regular tattoo artists.
There's Chris Trevino, Adrian Lee, and the Analog Crew.
They're my teachers and my friends.
Chris Garver worked here as a regular artist for a year.
He showed me so many different paths.
Yeah, I think there were a few foreign artists that went there.
I know Running Bear had went there, Charlie Roberts...
They learned first hand how American tattooers act.
They had so many coming out.
I had a great time.
All those guys at Three Tides are super cool dudes
and I used to make them get drunk.
They'd get really red.
When I was at Three Tides
I was drinking more alcohol than I ever have in my life
and I was probably getting really crazy and belligerent.
Mutsuo always took it so good.
No matter how much I was like, get him in a headlock
and give him noogies and stuff.
Yeah, he would always be cool the next day.
He would never be like, "Garver, you're an asshole."
I think Mutsuo, he's just like a super nice dude.
He's quiet. He's driven.
I think that's one of the things I admire about him is he's just persistent.
When he started off, he wasn't great at drawing.
But whenever somebody wasn't telling him to clean this
break that down, he would be drawing all day long.
He didn't really ask for anything.
I think everybody willingly would critique his stuff.
The way he came across, the way he was,
it made you want to help him.
You could tell he was gonna be a good tattoo artist.
He wasn't gonna give up.
By the time I left he started tattooing.
He picked it up so fast.
Out of all those people Chris Trevino is the one who I feel I spent the longest time with.
Trevino used to come work here for an entire month.
And at the end he'd go back for two months and then come back again.
That was his lifestyle.
Chris Trevino, he just does really epic tattoos.
He would put so much of his energy into every piece.
There would be a million outlines.
The shop didn't open until noon
but he would go in and open up at 9 o'clock.
I think Mutsuo had to let him in.
He was a huge influence on Mutsuo.
He definitely put a lot of teaching into him.
I think as far as how many good artists are there, I think Mutsuo...
I don't even know if at the time he realized
that he was at the perfect spot at the right time.
A lot of the other guys, I was suprised.
I don't think that they knew that they had that great opportunity
but he's the one that actually stuck it out.
More than anything, I appreciate everyone who's taught me over the years.
I feel extremely lucky.
Almost too lucky in a way. If I hadn't had that, I wouldn't be who I am today.
You're all done.
-Wow, it's great.
-I'll be back for more.
Please do. Thank you. Ride safe.
The last time I went to Japan
I went down to Osaka just to see those guys
and a lot of things are different but a lot of things are still the same.
They got art work from everybody that's worked there.
Got like, my old paintings.
I'm like, 'Oh. Maybe I should send them some new ones."
I asked Mutsuo to tattoo me and he was super stoked about it.
He tattooed this frog on my wrist.
It's like, kinda smoking. It's got the Tree Tides logo on there.
I could see it was like, "Woah. The apprentice came back."
His hand was kinda like...
He tattooed me and it was awesome.
I got tons of pictures of that.
[VICE CONTINUED IN PART 2]