Quotes from Akimitsu Takagi

In Osaka slang, a tattoo is called gaman— you know, "patience" or "perseverance." There are two things about getting tattooed that seem to impress people, the money it costs, and the pain it causes.

The walls were unadorned except for a tattered calendar that stopped at December 1941, when the world changed forever.

He opened his mouth and out came a rainbow, he thought, recalling the proverb about a person who talks a bigger game than he can deliver.

Even after a work-of-art tattoo was located, the problems were just beginning. The next obstacle in the collector's path was obtaining a contract for posthumous conveyance of the tattoo. The potential difficulty of this cannot be overemphasized, for people tend to be passionately attached to their own skins, even after death.

The three men shared a light meal of rice, miso soup with tofu and straw mushrooms, grilled butterfish, and various savory side dishes. (Daiyu's wife Mariko, as was customary, served them in silence, then ate later by herself in the kitchen.)

They discussed the war, the Occupation, and the future of an economically-shattered Japan ruled by an emperor who had announced that he was not, after all, a god. In the course of the conversation Kyosuke effortlessly quoted Chekhov, Chaucer, and Heine, though not in a pretentious way, and always with perfect relevance.

Among tattoo artists, there are certain taboos which it is absolutely forbidden to break. For example, they believe that if you tattoo a snake wrapped around a person's torso you have to make a little cut under the armpit or somewhere else where it won't show. Otherwise the throttling power of the snake's embrace will make it difficult to sleep, and within three years the person who has the snake tattoo will be dead.

So far Kenzo had managed to avoid being introduced to any of these walking wraiths, but he had a feeling that if he ever did meet his own doppel, he would gang away in the opposite direction as fast as possible.

suppose a murderer carries a torso away from the scene of the crime. What does he do with the leftover bones and internal organs once he's stripped off the skin? Actually I must confess that it only just occurred to me now that this sort of problem—the efficient management of crime-related waste products—might be called 'criminal economics.

Anyone who would buy into that load of moronic propaganda they call the Pronouncement from Imperial Headquarters would have to be soft in the head, don't you think? Let's just say that participating in the war wasn't exactly my idea of a delightful experience. Day after day we would sink innumerable enemy aircraft carriers and battleships. I remember counting sixty ships destroyed, each one full of men who probably didn't want to be fighting any more than we did.

Daiyu Matsushita was not the sort of policeman who used violence, intimidation, and torture to extract confessions from suspects. He preferred to let reason and systematic detective work do the job. His philosophy reflected the New Constitution of 1946. He tried at all times to show respect for a suspect's human rights, and he would only send a case to the prosecutor if there was direct evidence to back up the accusations.

Daiyu and his pianist wife, Mariko, had met at the university and married for love. Their standing joke was that someday when they were old and gray they would spend a leisurely day together, and maybe even go out to dinner.

A tattoo is the embodiment of carnal desire and, once she's had a taste of the needle, a woman—much more than a man—will feel herself aroused and wanting more. At first the process may seem frightening, but that's just the same as the fear a maiden will feel on her wedding night. It's soon forgotten in the discovery of pleasure