"I’m delighted to announce the completion of this and the non tattoo version from the same blocks. In Rabbit Year, the model is posed against a yellowish-orange background, and as Rabbit is the year immediately before Dragon, their colors are close, beginning to suggest the rainbow effect of all the twelve designs together when they will be completed in the future. The upper tattoo is derived from a Kuniyoshi print of a toy rabbit ferryman originally made as an Aka-e or red picture, produced as a lucky talisman to ward off smallpox in the 19th century. Children’s toys were popular subjects of these prints, as were images of Shōki the Demon Queller, since illness was often framed as the work of demons. The lower tattoo is the Jade Rabbit and the Full Moon from Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Phases of the Moon series, the print showing The Monkey King and the Jade Rabbit before a pink-shaded large moon, though the rabbit has been reversed to better fit the moon in question. There is of course a play on words with the English phrase mooning, and as my handsome model, Andrew, is a sailor, there is also a little reference to traditional naval tattoos of rabbits in this area as well." Binnie, November, 2024.
