A Queen’s Gallery exhibition tells the story of centuries of artistic and cultural exchange between east and west

In 1881, two young British princes serving as midshipmen in the Royal Navy visited Japan, where they had a meeting with the emperor. This encounter wasn’t the most significant between the royal families of Britain and Japan, or the most extravagant – the princes bought a metal teapot and cups as a gift for their father in a nascent tourist market – but it was emblematic of the long and complex interaction between the two countries. While in Japan, the princes, aged just 16 and 17, got tattoos on their arms: a couple of storks for Prince Albert and a dragon and a tiger for the future George V, Prince George.

“Tattoos were part of naval culture and were a British aristocratic fashion in the late 19th century,” explains Rachel Peat, the curator of a new exhibition, Japan: Courts and Culture, which opened at the Queen’s Gallery this week. “But in Japan, tattooing had very different connotations. It has been both a revered art form and at various times illegal in Japanese history, so there is a mystique and almost danger to getting one, which might well have been part of the allure for the tourists.”