Soul Carver 彫魂

Tattooing, Sacred Ink

Reiki

Meditation

Audio

Painting and Calligraphy

Artist, Craftsman, Laymonk

Yoso is a multidisciplinary artist, Soul Carver, Reiki Master, and lay monk based in Miyazaki, Kyushu, Japan. His work moves across tattooing and Irezumi, Sumi-e ink painting, digital art, haiku, and photography — practices bound together by a shared inquiry: the cultivation of consciousness, the nature of the self, and the possibility of living in genuine harmony with the world.

Through practice and commitment, Yoso aims to create art that helps transcend the self — Soul, Body, and Mind united.

Origins — A Spiritual Life from the Start

Yoso's path began early. Raised in an environment shaped by natural therapy, he was introduced to meditation, yoga, and alternative medicine in childhood. Open to spirituality from the beginning, a formative encounter with Reiki and acupuncture at sixteen — treating what had been a serious depression — became the pivot point of his life. The experience healed him and reoriented him entirely. Fine art and energy work became inseparable vocations from that moment forward.

He went on to study martial arts, exploring hard physical and mental disciplines before discovering the deeper intelligence of chi gong and meditation — the difference between force and flow. The progression from outer intensity toward inner refinement is a pattern that runs through everything he does.

The Western Arc — From Academia to Digital Activism

Trained in classical Western fine art traditions, Yoso spent years moving through the intersecting worlds of digital art, motion graphics, live performance, and cultural activism. From Academia to Digital Activism, he studied Western traditions and contemporary pop and subcultures before developing a growing interest in Eastern philosophies. His work engaged directly with political and social realities — projects exploring race, power, consumerism, and collective identity — and found audiences at major international platforms: the Serpentine Galleries in London (in collaboration with artist Cao Fei), OFFF Festival in Spain, Krakow Film Festival, Lowlands Festival in the Netherlands, and exhibitions in Taipei, Brussels, Madrid, and beyond.

Collaborators across this period included Nike, Diesel, DJ Rupture, London Elektricity, The Stanton Warriors, D-FUSE, Addictive TV, and many others across music, design, and contemporary art. The work was energetic, global, and purposeful — and something deeper was still calling.

Japan — Where Practice Became a Way of Life

The encounter with Japan was decisive. Seeking to go deeper on the spiritual path, inspired by Nature, Shinto, Buddhism, and the Shaolin Spirit, Yoso pursued the soul's journey in Japan — reconnecting the heart and the hand, body and spirit, one breath at a time. What began as an exploration became a homecoming. Miyazaki offered what he had been moving toward: the conditions for genuine practice.

Japan gave him an entire civilisation organised around the questions he was already asking. Shinto's understanding of presence in all things — the kami inhabiting a stone, a river, an ancient tree — offered a way of relating to the natural world that felt both ancient and urgently alive. The Buddhist concept of kokoro (心), that untranslatable word encompassing heart, mind, and spirit as one, became a compass. The Zen insistence on direct experience over doctrine, and the Bodhisattva vow to work for the liberation of all sentient beings, shaped his understanding of what art and healing are actually for.

From haiku, he absorbed the discipline of correct seeing — the demand that a single image be absolutely precise, absolutely present, uncontaminated by idea or performance. Bashō understood haiku composition as a Way (michi 道), a form of self-cultivation through careful attention to nature and language — and Yoso recognises the same spirit in his own daily practice. From shokunin culture — the Japanese ideal of the craftsperson who dedicates a lifetime to mastering and transmitting a practice — he found an ethical framework for his work. The shokunin holds the spiritual and the practical as one; excellence is the offering.

Koyasan, the sacred mountain complex of esoteric Buddhism, deepened his relationship with ritual, lineage, and the invisible dimensions of practice. The teachings of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche and the Bodhisattva tradition — particularly the Four Great Vows, whose power lies in their deliberately impossible scale — informed the orientation of his heart: to practice for the benefit of all.

Tattooing — Soul Carver 彫魂

In Japan, tattooing revealed itself as the practice that brought everything together.

Rooted in the Irezumi and Horimono tradition — Japanese body art whose spiritual lineage stretches back centuries — tattooing for Yoso is simultaneously a craft, a healing modality, and a meditative discipline. The living medium demands absolute presence. Every line is a commitment.

He calls it soul carving: working at the threshold between the visible and the invisible, between surface and depth. The symbols that recur in his tattoo practice are drawn from Buddhist iconography, Shinto tradition, and the natural world — dragons, waves, botanicals, sacred geometry, animals — each carrying layers of spiritual meaning that extend far beyond decoration to encourage transformation. His love for people, the cultivation of spirit and compassion, and a quest for integrity drew him to the way of the ink: the simplicity of intimate encounters, and the attention required when working on a living medium.

His guiding question, carved into his practice as a kind of koan: Is this pure? Pure in the sense of being aligned with the source, uncontaminated by fear, ego, performance, or distraction. If yes, move toward it. If still ripening, wait and purify more.

The studio is a temple. Each session is approached is the spirit of love ant compassion.

Daily Life — Ritual, Harmony, Simplicity

Yoso's days in Miyazaki are structured around practice. Pre-dawn preparation, morning meditation, the Heart Sutra, chi gong, gratitude. The rhythm is deliberate and unhurried — an expression of the belief that how you live is inseparable from what you make.

The countryside of southern Japan constantly feeds the work: the quality of light, the wind ond the bamboo, the sound of cicadas, firefly season, the shifting moods of the Pacific coast. Nature is a teacher — a reminder that harmony is a continuous orientation, renewed moment to moment. Evening ends with gratitude: everything prepared for the next morning, the mind brought to the heart, a centre of energy ready to celebrate tomorrow.

His art practices in this context — Sumi-e painting, writings, drawing, photography — become acts of listening as much as expression. Shinsei (心性), mindful creation, is the spirit behind the work: every brushstroke, every drop of ink or water, each line drawn, an act of profound meditation. Shaping the formless — discovering patterns, in abstraction, in the unexpected arrangement of a natural flow, something that speaks from beyond the surface. He is drawn to the edges of consciousness, the places where discipline and the unknown meet the light at the centre, and to the peace and beauty found at the core.

The Vow

Awakening mind... that which is conscious... for the good of sentience. — Yoso

The Bodhisattva ideal is the active orientation of Yoso's practice. He is a lay monk. The vow to work for the benefit of all beings, renewed each day, shapes how he tattoos, how he teaches, how he heals, love his family or how he receives a guest to his studio.

Called Sensei by those he has worked with and taught, he holds the word with humility. Sensei — 先生, one who came before — carries precedence, and with it, responsibility. It is an encouragement to keep deepening the practice with integrity, to keep transmitting, to celebrate the flow.

"I can only talk from a human perspective. I invite everyone to explore consciousness in its most honest, rational, mystical, and magical forms. We often look without to find new ideas, inner peace, or stimulations — we have all we need within the experience of consciousness itself." — Y.

Looking Forward

Yoso is developing a Dojo / Refuge / Temple project in the Miyazaki countryside — a space grounded in nature, practice, and community support, where people can come for retreats, inspiration, and a direct encounter with a simpler, more intentional way of living.

He spends most of the year in Miyazaki City, with regular travels to Europe and occasional visits to other destinations. A life work in progress, he celebrates each encounter — whether relating to tattooing, Reiki, or other creative avenues that benefit humanity and the world we live in. He remains open to collaborations that carry genuine depth: tattoo commissions, custom artwork, creative consultations, and encounters with artists, producers, collectors, and institutions whose work is guided by integrity and the cultivation of the human spirit.

The heart of my work resides in the cultivation of light.

One breath at a time. One bridge at a time.

Gassho.

Y.