A case of ‘criminal economy’

Once upon a time, a tattoo artist had three children, two girls and a boy. The father was an artist of great skill, and like many within the insular (and illegal) world of Japanese tattooing, his designs were coveted so much that those bearing his designs would agree to be skinned following their death in order to preserve as a sort of macabre artwork. The artwork he created for his children—the fairy tale sorcerers Tsunedahime, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru—were cursed masterpieces, for the three sorcerers could never be in the same art for superstition claimed they would destroy each other. Kinue Nomura is the last surviving child of the tattoo artist, and while her Orochimaru and its writhing snake have always invited stares, she’s truly starting to feel hunted by the obsessive skin collectors. Or at least that’s what she confides to Kenzo Matsushita when she invites him to a mysterious rendezvous at her home late one evening. He arrives to find an empty house, and after breaking in, discovers her dismembered body in a locked bathroom. Only her head and limbs are present, with her torso—and its exquisite designs—missing. When another tattooed body is found skinned, Kenzo and his brother—an inspector in the Tokyo force—aren’t at a loss for suspects. A former yakuza boyfriend, a creepy skin collector and a jealous brother looking to inherit a fortune, possibly even a long-lost sibling—they’re all possible culprits. But who would be clever enough to leave no trace at what appear to be impossible crimes?

Akimitsu Takagi isn’t a household name in the United States, but among mystery aficionados in Japan his works are regarded as classics in the genre. His first novel originally published in 1948, The Tattoo Murder Case, is an accomplished locked-room mystery that owes some of the style of John Dickson Carr. There’s also a nod to Conan Doyle and Christie, as Kenzo calls on a childhood friend, ‘Boy Genius’ Kamizu Kyosuke, to help after the police are stumped. Kyosuke’s methodology and reasoning bears more than a passing resemblance to the cool deduction and ‘little grey cells’ of Holmes and Poirot. But what sets Takagi’s novel apart from the classics of western mystery writing is the time and place from which he wrote. Tokyo is still largely in ruins, Kenzo and Kamizu bear the memories of war, and aspects of the case depend on who might have survived the H-bomb. The sleuths have to pursue leads among the women selling themselves to afford rations, and tattoo aficionados decry the rudimentary tattoos many that the Army of the Occupation—the Americans--sport. (Even the existence of The Tattoo Murder Case owes its existence to the war, as ‘frivolous’ fiction such as mysteries were banned during the war in an effort to focus the public on fighting.) The question at the center of The Tattoo Murder Case—how could something this horrible and impossible happen?—might not only refer to the crime of murder, but to the society still trying to understand the cataclysm of its recent past. If that was Takagi’s intention, it gives the solution a deeper meaning than the typical whodunit.

Ably translated by Deborah Boehm, The Tattoo Murder Case will appeal to readers of classic crime in any genre, but especially those of the impossible puzzle/locked room sort. The realism of Takagi’s Japan following the war is a draw for fans of world literature or even historical fiction, and those who are interested in tattooing as an art, and the closed society of Japanese tattoos in particular would find the book of notable.