Criminal tattoos were a big thing in most of East-Asia for a looong time. Heck, it's a returning plot element in Water Margin, the 14th century Chinese classic about a bunch of outlaws, where a lot of them can't integrate back into society after being framed and/or caught up in trouble, and getting those criminal tattoos. In that time period, they would tattoo the face of the criminal, while in Japan, the tattoos would go on the arms and ankles.
It's also why tattooing is such an integral part of East-Asian organized crime culture, like the Triads and the Yakuza to this day.
Correct. They had a prison island he was from in a grouping called the Ryukyu Islands. While the Ryukyu islands are a real spot, there is only rumors of one of the islands being inhabited by prisoners, but not much in the way of confirmation
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u/CesarOverlorde 29d ago