Kensho Tattoo Co

Kensho Tattoo is Calgary’s only tattoo studio that specializes in Japanese body art. For tattoo enthusiasts looking for distinctive, elaborate and colourful designs depicting samurai, koi, demons and birds, owner Rick Wilson and his colleagues Kevin Pregitzer and Stuart Singh are your men with the needle guns.

While Rick concentrates on colouring the sleeve (full-length arm tattoo) of a customer lying face down on a tattoo table, he speaks fondly of the camaraderie between the shop's tattoo artists. “We all have a similar style,” he says. "We kind of feed off each other and push each other in different ways.”

Inside the second-floor shop located on 10th Street Northwest in Kensington, their passion for everything Japanese is evident, from the statue of Buddha and the samurai swords at the entrance to framed Asian art prints, body suit designs and masks that decorate almost every bit of wall space.

“Those tattoos were done in the '30s and people are still doing them,” says Rick, referencing the black and white photos of Japanese body art also displayed the shop's front entrance. “It ages really well as a tattoo. Colour realism doesn’t age really well, but the Japanese tattoos are of a timeless design.”