Photographs lift the lid on Japan's underground 1950s tattoo scene

Takagi Akimitsu, one of the most prolific and well-known crime novelists of 20th century Japan, was also a brilliant photographer. A French book depicting his photos from 1950s Tokyo was recently on display at the International Tattoo Fair in Paris.

Akimitsu was born in 1920 and died in 1995. He acquired his nickname "the tattoo writer" after his first book Shisei Satsujin Jikenk was published in 1948, which deals with the murders of tattooed people in Tokyo.

In 2017, the first French translation of this book (Irezumi in French) was realeased, and journalist Pascal Bagot, who had been doing research on traditional Japanese tattooing for 15 years, decided to contact the writer's heirs.

During a meeting in Tokyo, he learned that Takagi took hundreds of photographs of tattoed people in the 1950s, which led him to publish a photography book entitled The Tattoo Writer in 2022.

RFI: How did Takagi take these photos that are shown at the International Tattoo Fair? 

Pascal Bagot: Takagi got acquainted with tattooers and some tattooed people during the writing of his first book.

He was so interested and passionate about Japanese tattooing that he started documenting it. He liked taking pictures, too, and used a medium format camera.

The photos are absolutely amazing and have an artistic and historical value for historians, sociologists and lovers of traditional tattoos. 

I'm in charge of promoting this collection and publishing it.

RFI: What do you know about the tattoed men who were photographed near a waterfall in Tokyo?

PB: I'm still doing research to find out exactly who these people are.

What I know so far is that they created a club in the beginning of the 20th century, of people keeping the tradition of the old Tokyo tattooing style. It may be the oldest tattoo club in the world.

These people are gathering in a public park and having a good time socialising. They are mainly carpenters, craftsmen, firemen, etc. People from the working class.

RFI: Was having a tattoo allowed at that time in Japan?

PB: Tattooing in Japan was officially banned at the end of the 19th century and for about 70 years until 1945. 

It really had a negative image in Japan because of this prohibition ... and because the mafia and the yakuza started to adopt it as a badge of their outsider lifestyle.

RFI: What was the traditional Japanese tattoo method used at that time?

PB: The traditional hand style technique used is called tebori. It means carving by hand. 

It uses bamboo or wooden sticks ... on top they put some needles and then, using the left hand, they stretch the skin and pierce the skin by repeating a movement with the tool. 

It's supposed to be less traumatic than the machine.

Surprisingly it's a technique that is very popular at the moment. A lot of Western people are returning to this technique because of the craftsmanship, the authenticity, and also for the quality of the results.

RFI: We can see a lot of tattoed women in the photo series…

PB: This is a very specific aspect of this photo archive.

It can be explained by the relationship between Takagi and tattooing, because he got really interested in tattooing when he was a child. 

He went to a public bath with his mother when he was really young and there he saw tattooed women and somehow it changed his life. 

That's why when he started documenting the photos, he really paid a strong attention to women because they had something special, a kind of erotic and phantasmagoric (dreamlike) aspect too.

It's very interesting to see these women with the same strong, big tattoos that men have.

All this was very intriguing for the storyteller that he was.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.