Some of the most flamboyant bodily decorations are displayed at times when an individual is moving from one identity to another, Ar. such as when Young people enter adulthood. In certain River, South American tribes, such as the Akwe-Shavante of the Xingu people in transitional stages paint their whole bodies, using colours and patterns to indicate family and political affiliations within the tribe. In Japan, there is a day in January when twenty-year-olds mark their entry into adulthood by dressing in kimo-nos, garments which for many centuries were designed to distinguish status, family allegiance, and between single and married women; the last indicated in the style of the sleeves. People also use their hair to mark such distinctions, and a feature of initiation into adulthood among East African tribes like the Maasai and the Samburu, is to follow a period of allowing youngsters to grow their hair long and unruly with a completely shaven head, painted with ochre to celebrate the attainment of adulthood. Such transitions from one stage of life to another are known as riles of passage, and these have often become a central subject area in anthropological studies. (For that reason, rites of passage will be covered in more detail in chapter 6.)
At times, people mark their membership in a group with more permanent modifications to the body. For example, scarification of the face offers a way to demonstrate publicly a person's membership of a clan, while more private modifications such as circumcision may mark acceptance into a religious group, as in Judaism, or the achievement of sexual maturity in the practice found in many societies, but disapproved of in the West, and so described as genital mutilation. In several Pacific societies, tattoos carry meanings, from a person's political position in the Marquesas Islands through commitment to an underworld gang (in japan) to "- identity as a 'First', or Indigenous, people for the Maori in New Zealand. An interesting addition to the repertoire of bodily dis-play is 1 found when permanent scarification such as a tattoo is hidden except on special occasions,such as festivals,when japanese