Paiwan

Paiwan society is unusual among Taiwan's indigenous peoples for its hereditary aristocracy, and tattooing was a privilege of rank. Hand tattooing was restricted to the daughters of chiefs and aristocrats, symbolizing honor and status, with motifs including the hundred pace viper, human figures, and the sun.

The viper, Deinagkistrodon acutus, is regarded as the guardian spirit of the Paiwan and the greatest of all spirits, and tattooists were typically aristocrats who were also shamans. The practice was suppressed during the Japanese occupation (1895 to 1945) and again under the Nationalist government, leaving fewer than forty tattooed elder women by recent decades, and is now being revived by the artist Cudjuy Patjidres alongside documentation work that produced the 2015 Engraving Prestige exhibition.