The Tattoo Murder Case Quotes

“You have the mark of a genius. You’re highly intelligent. Also lazy. You don’t make any effort to do work that doesn’t appeal to you. But once something engages your interest, you apply yourself wholeheartedly to solving that problem. The trouble is that you rarely find an objective that seems worthy of your attention. In this postwar mess of a country, I would guess that you’re having a hard time finding a practical application for your genius”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“Anyway, one of the most taboo of all tattoos is the Three Curses.” “The Three Curses?” Kenzo asked, feigning ignorance. “Surely you’ve heard that saying: ‘The snake eats the frog, the frog eats the slug, the slug dissolves the snake.’ At any rate, those creatures are the familiars of the three rival sorcerers. The sorcerer Jiraiya always appears riding on a giant toad, Orochimaru on a snake, and Tsunedahime on a slug. If anyone ever tattooed a snake, a frog, and a slug on one person’s body, the three creatures would fight to the death. That’s why such a tattoo is forbidden. Even if a client begged for that tattoo and offered to pay a fortune for it, the artist would be morally obliged to refuse.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“As far as he could tell, suicidal people were often in a strangely romantic mood. It was part of the reason why people still flocked to famous suicide spots as Mount Mihara and Kegon Waterfall—the lure of tradition, and the desire to decorate one’s last moments with a bit of beautiful scenery.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“There’s a thin line between obsession and derangement, and I’m not at all sure the professor hasn’t crossed it.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“Did you find out why they call them sushi tattoos?” “I gather it’s because they’re scattered about on the skin like pieces of sushi with no artistic continuity or coherence.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“Kyosuke was right on time, as usual. He was dressed in winter-white flannel trousers, a black turtleneck sweater, and a gray-and-black herringbone tweed jacket. An oyster-colored silk scarf was slung carelessly around his neck. Kenzo, who had thrown on some wrinkled khaki slacks and an old tan sweater, stared admiringly at his friend’s dashing getup.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“a tale of two brothers intent on killing each other. Kenzo couldn’t help thinking that this terrible case was a reflection of the moral bankruptcy and spiritual corruption that followed the Second World War.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“This country’s in the grips of total pandemonium. All over Japan, it’s as if eighty million people had simultaneously gone out of their minds. Staple foods are either rationed or else completely unavailable, and the distribution always seems to be running behind schedule. On top of that, the authorities have cracked down on hoarding, and anyone caught laying in supplies is ruthlessly punished.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.)”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“Japan had always had a thriving sex trade, but this was different. Before the war there had been a few streetwalkers in the seamier parts of town, but most of the prostitution was carried on in designated brothels, behind closed doors, with a certain decadent élan. Now, though, there were hordes of women standing around all the major train stations hoping to rent their bodies to some stranger for an hour or two, simply because they could find no other way to support themselves.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“if he ever did meet his own doppel, he would gäng away in the opposite direction as fast as possible. More likely, from what he had heard about such meetings, neither man would be able to see the faintest resemblance to himself.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“Doppelgänger—double-walker. The word had originally had mildly supernatural connotations—“a wraith of one alive,” said Kenzo’s German-Japanese dictionary—but it had come to mean simply a double, or an uncanny look-alike.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“This is really a terrible world, you know that? I mean first we got our asses kicked in the war, and even though I was happy to come back to Japan in one piece, things have turned out pretty miserably since then. You know the old Confucian saying, the one about divided loyalties? Well, I’m living the truth of that right now, and it makes it difficult to try to do the right thing. Whoever invented the term ukiyo—floating world— knew what he was talking about. It’s like they say: Life is hell.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“You don’t want to get too caught up in this world.” Tsunetaro’s voice was stern, but his facial expression had relaxed perceptibly. “I’ve seen it a hundred times. You may start off as an impartial observer, but tattooing is like narcotics. You become fascinated, then addicted, and the next thing you know you’re ruining your own skin with ink and dyes.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“The walls were unadorned except for a tattered calendar that stopped at December 1941, when the world changed forever.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“Information seemed to be bombarding him from all sides, and he wanted to get it all arranged in a straight line. To separate the useless data from that which was relevant to the case, and then to decide upon the main thrust of the investigation—those were the official duties of the detective chief inspector.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“do you really think you can solve a case like this by checking out people’s alibis? If you do, you’re totally off base. I mean, don’t you think that the person who created this fiendish crime would have taken the trouble to create a sturdy alibi for himself while he was at it? I’ll bet the culprit is having a good laugh at your expense, at this very moment. Instead of wasting your resources interrogating an innocent person like myself, why don’t you and your cohorts spend your time doing something a little more productive, like learning about tattoos?”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“one thing I know for certain is that there’s a big difference between good versus evil, and beauty versus ugliness. For example, you people tend to despise tattoos, as if they were an affront to your puritanical eyes. You seem to see anyone who happens to have a tattoo as a thief or a murderer or some sort of lowlife scum, and that simply isn’t the case at all. In the so-called civilized countries of the West, even among royalty, aristocracy, and members of the upper classes, getting tattooed was a widespread fashion at the turn of the century. And all those people agreed that the Japanese tattoo was the absolute zenith of the art form, on a par with our famous ukiyo-e woodblock prints. If you people in the police department could just learn to look at tattoos with a slightly more artistic eye, I think you might be surprised to discover the strange beauty there. I don’t mean to climb on my soapbox, but I really think Japan should use our defeat in that stupid war as a time for national rebirth. We need to repeal the senseless ban on tattoos, once and for all.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“Sensei, you may be hoping that some fictional mastermind detective will show up like Sherlock Holmes and solve all the riddles of this case, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that in real life. We have to investigate meticulously, one step at a time. Even if we know from the start that leads are going nowhere, we have to conscientiously follow up. That may seem like a very roundabout approach, but it ends up being the most efficient way by far. In murder investigations, the shortest distance between two points may turn out to be a circle.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“When she saw the severed head she fainted dead away. What can I say, she’s a woman.” “I don’t know what it has to do with being a woman,” Daiyu responded in a serious tone of voice. “I think anyone might faint at such a ghoulish sight. I mean, if this weren’t our job, a few of us might be under a doctor’s care right about now.” The investigator looked properly chastened,”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“There was a severed head, and two soft white forearms, and two long legs from the knees down, all laid out on the tile floor, with the hideous cuts of the saw clearly visible. The faucet was running, and the water had filled the bathtub and overflowed onto the floor. The long, luxuriant black hair on the bloated head twined and floated in the water like an undulant knot of snakes.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case

“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.”
― Akimitsu Takagi, Tattoo Murder Case