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Tattooed Samoans don skin suits to avoid offending Japanese hosts

Tattoos on legs of rugby player

Yamagata, JAPAN — Samoan players will wear skin suits to keep traditional Pacific islander tattoos under wraps during the World Cup in Japan to avoid offending their hosts.

For the Japanese, tattoos have long been associated with members of 'yakuza' crime syndicates, and inked tourists may be met with disapproval and sometimes banned from gyms, bathhouses or traditional hot-spring resorts.

But tattoos are also a fundamental part of the Pacific identity back home for the Samoans.

"We have to respect the culture of the land we are in wherever we go. We have our own culture as well but we are not in Samoa now," team manager Va'elua Aloi Alesana told the World Cup website.

"There are some training venues that have allowed us to show our tattoos and some places where we can't, and for those places, we've been given 'skins' to wear to cover our tattoos.

"The extra skins are only for when we go to the (swimming) pools though. At the training we can wear our normal clothes."

Last December, World Rugby advised both players and supporters to cover up tattoos during the tournament.

Read more at ESPN