the tattoo writer

Takagi Akimitsu
the tattoo writer

Photographs: Takagi Akimitsu

Text: Akiko Takagi, Gérald Peloux, Pascal Bagot

Publisher: Pascal Bagot

200 pages

Pictures: 134

Year: 2023

ISBN: 9791069966246

Comments: Hardcover with tipped-in photograph, 25 x 20 cm, b&w photographs. Second edition, 2023. Text in English and Japanese.

Takagi's photographs documenting the tattoo scene in Tokyo in the 1950s.

Born in Aomori, Akimitsu Takagi (1920-1995) was one of the greatest Japanese crime novelists of the 20th century. Mad about tattooing and aided by his medium-format camera, he documented the Tokyo tattoo scene in the 1950s and 60s. By shooting the greatest tattoo artists of the time and their clients, M.Takagi built a rare archive of the times. Very few images shedding light on this art form from the Shōwa era (1926-1989) have survived until now.

Left forgotten in the writer's library until their discovery in 2017, by French journalist Pascal Bagot, the photographs he took make him one of the most important observers of 20th century Japanese tattoo history.

Not only do these photographs have a considerable historic value, but they are also of exceptional quality and are interesting from a photographic point of view, revealing the photographer behind the writer.

- From the project's website.