Personal Attributes of Nicholas II

[aya-anya]

Hi, I encountered this topic and Nicky's tatoo is quite interesting...I read it in a Japanese book (actually the book's a translation of the excerpts from Nicky's diary, the author of the book had read Nicholas's diary in Moscow around 1983-1984).

According to the book, Saigo no Russia Koutei Nicholai Nisei no Nikki[The Diary of Nicholas II, the Last Tsar in Russia ] written by Koichi Yashuda (Tokyo: Asahi Sensho, 1990)  

pp. 26
Nicholas must have known that there was an excellent tattooist in Nagasaki. As for "tatoo" there was a scene where Loti got a tatoo of peony on his chest, in a book, Okikusan written by Pierre Loti, which Nicholas had read on the day before he arrived in Nagasaki.
[...]
When I encountered this description about his tatoo, I wondered if he had kept [...] the tatoo which was done in Nasasaki as a token of his visit to Japan until he was killed in 1918 and felt surprised but quite impressed. [The image of] Nicholas got much closer to me.  
[end of quotation from the book. Sorry for my rough translation...]

I've been wondering, if his tatoo was inspired by Loti's Okikusan...

aya-anya

[Georgiy]

Hikaru is right - even to this day your average Japanese would not normally get a tatoo as they are normally only seen on gangsters, and public baths often will not let tatooed people in. There are some other photos in that tennis sequence which show the dragon on the Tsar's arm very clearly. It is not so obvious on screen, but printed out on photographic paper you can see a big dragon stretching up the length of his forearm.

[hikaru]

Tatoo had a function of a professional mark too in Japan:
merchants, geishas had it.
Noble people never.
But in Russia, ( in Soviet Union)  mainly sailors or prisoners had it.

I think that Pierre Lotie and others began to do it seing the tatoo of the geishas .
So we could say that tatoo of Russian  tsar was an evidence and result of profondly developing cultural relations.
So the tatoo was a one  step at  the education of the Heir.

[Georgiy]

No, he definately had a big tattoo of a dragon and there are a couple of photos where it is fairly clear. Strictly speaking, an orthodox believer shouldn't get tattoos - however he was young and young people are not always known for doing as they should. More than what OTMA thought about it, I wonder what the Empress thought!

[James1941]

I have mentioned this before. Anna Anderson,  in the late 1920s, when being questioned about what she remembered of her life as a grand duchess, mentioned that "her father" had a tattoo. This was quickly challenged by others as nonsense. The tsar had no tattoos, they countered, and this proved she was a fake. Now we see that Nicholas did have at least one tattoo. We know Anna Anderson was not the grand duchess soa person or persons who had intimate knowledge of the imperial family must have been coaching her.

[grandduchessella]

No, he definately had a big tattoo of a dragon and there are a couple of photos where it is fairly clear. Strictly speaking, an orthodox believer shouldn't get tattoos - however he was young and young people are not always known for doing as they should. More than what OTMA thought about it, I wonder what the Empress thought!

GV had a large dragon that was done while he visited Asia. Perhaps Nicholas did as well? There was a very famous tattooist who did GV as well as EVII.

[Georgiy]

I have had some of those photos of him playing tennis where the tattoo is visible printed on photographic paper. It is quite visible, and is indeed a dragon. AA could have made an educated guess, or heard about it from someone. I don't think it was completely unknown. Apparantly he finished reading Loti's Madame Chrysantheme just before arriving in Japan and was inspired to get it by that.

[Mie]

Yeas. I watched those photos more accurately and there is something what could be tattoo but as well it could be rash.. :-/ I do not know... Nikolai seems tom me bee a man who took his job to be tzar full of his heart. He tried to do everything right and tried to be moral... Takin tattoo do not seems to be the first or even second thing what he could do. He was not rebel ... And yeat if he would have taken a tattoo he did it as a father too. He showed to his children that he did same things as prisoners did... :-/ I do not know.. I hope I'm not too wrong what I'm saying here and it is only my opinion. Still I want more evidence to that if he really had a tattoo. I would not be sad and dissapointed if he had one I'd be pretty eager..

[Georgiy]

Well, he had it done when he was a young man - and young men are not always renowned for their forethought. Strictly speaking an Orthodox believer should not have tattoos. Maybe he regretted it later, I do not know, but seeing as he had it exposed while playing tennis with family and friends I don't think he disliked it. It wasn't so uncommon for European upperclass men to get a tattoo in those days.

[Sarushka]

I have had some of those photos of him playing tennis where the tattoo is visible printed on photographic paper. It is quite visible, and is indeed a dragon.

Have those photos been printed in any book that you know of, Georgiy, or are they originals? I'd like to see them!

[Versoix]

I hope I'm not opening a redundant thread, but I did a search and have not found any information about the color of the Tsar's eyes. They were blue and luminous, and much remarked upon. Apparently Anna Anderson had much the same eye color, and this was taken as yet another proof of her identity by her partisans. The fact is, though, there are numerous shades of blue. Can anyone provide any information that would help to determine what shade "Romanov blue" or "Anastasia ble" is?

Thanks.
A.L.

[Georgiy]

They are the ones which have been posted on this thread. Photographic paper just makes it a wee bit  clearer I guess. SFAIK they haven't been published in any books.

[Phillida]

For some reason, the tattoo shows up very well on my screen in two or three of the posts. I much appreciate finally seeing the dragon.

Thank you

[Mie]

Yeas they had blue eyes but it has been discussed what kind of they really were. Like them hearcolour you can not say for sure what kind of they were... :-/ If you look colorised photos they eyes is usually made more blond blue than a real blue.... maybe that color it was. My mum has really blond blue almost gray but still not -really really light color. I think that they had almost the same color..  Alix had blue eyes if I'm right -or more like gray..?

[Lisa]

Nicholas definetly had a tatoo:

Why we could not see it properly? Here my hypothesis
1: here remove it and had just a scar, so it is less visible
2: in the 19 and 20th century, because of the chimical process of the photography, some of the colors are changed in the photo. For exemple, blue looks like white and red and yellow look like black. So IF his tatoo was blue, we could not see it properly.
3: the person who developp the photograph retouched the negative in order to hide Nicholas' tatoo...

Pictures of Nicholas' right arm:
     
Here I pushed  the contrast and you can see clearly  a tatoo!
 

Just to compare, here is the George V's dragon:
http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo/celeb-georgehtm.htm