Orgullo Japonés (Japanese Pride)

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TOYOHASHI – On March 13, 2026, my last day in Japan, I took a train ride for a couple hours to meet in south of Tokyo Ayaka Shiota, a Japanese model and reggaetón dancer who has become internationally famous for her “Pinche Loca” tattoo.

Ayaka and Kushu Shiota prepare for their family portrait at their home in Toyohashi. (Photo by Gaige Davila/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Ayaka Shiota’s “Hecho en Shinovi” tattoo, an homage to the “Hecho en Mexico” logo used by the Mexican government to designate products as made in Mexico. Shinovi is the name of her two-person reggaeton dance group. (Photo by Gaige Davila/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

I have a permanent devotion to the Chicano subculture, defined by political, ethnic and cultural liberation in the United States. I wondered what made Ayaka and her husband, from an ocean away, spend most of their lives embracing what was a part of my upbringing.

Fumiaki Shiota’s tattoo bodysuit, with traditional half sleeves. The subject matter ranges from Azteca, Mexica and Chicano themes. Across his collar bones reads “Orgullo Japonés,” or Japanese Pride, and his chest bears the salutation “C/S,” for Con Safos, which is one of the most common phrases in Chicano culture. Fumiaki raps in Japanese, English and Spanish under the name SURELO. (Photo by Gaige Davila/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

As I spent the afternoon with her, her husband, Fumiaki, and their 4-year old son, Kushu, in their home in Toyohashi, I found people that I felt at home with in a way I hadn’t for the entirety of my time in Japan. Despite the language barrier, I learned they resonated with the culture for the same reason I liked it, too: it was liberation from uniformity. It’s how we could be defiant when so little around us seemed to be in our control.

Kushu Shiota takes photos of his mother, Ayaka, on her cellphone at their home in Toyohashi. (Photo by Gaige Davila/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Ayaka is eight months pregnant, meaning the family will soon grow. Fumiaki, a perilla leaf farmer and a hip hop artist known as SURELO, has a tattoo across his chest reading “Orgullo Japonés,” or “Japanese Pride” in Spanish. And while Ayaka’s tattoo “Hecho en Shinovi” does not have a grammatical translation, I understood both of these pieces as their commitments to Chicano culture as craft.

Ayaka Shiota, who is 8 months pregnant in this photo, holds the original stencils of her first tattoos, which were heavily inspired by Chicano-style tattoos from California. (Photo by Gaige Davila/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

If I were to put it in Spanish and Japanese slang, they are bien gachi (ガチ) or bien michi (道), which both mean, in different ways, that their place in the culture is lifelong, just as mine is.