Pascal Bagot is a French journalist based in Lyon, who has been fascinated by Japanese tattoo culture  since 2006.

This passion led him to set off to have his entire back tattooed, using the traditional tebori  technique, by hand, by Tokyo master tattooist Horitoshi I. During the eight years of this project, he  interviewed many Japanese tattoo artists, both traditional and modern (Horitoshi I, Horiyoshi III,  Gifu Horihide, Yokosuka Horihide, Horitada, etc.).  

These interviews, published in specialist magazines, help to spread knowledge of the art of  horimono (or irezumi, shisei, among the various Japanese names for traditional tattooing), while at  the same time consolidating his expertise. 

In 2009, he wrote and co-directed a documentary on the subject entitled The Way of Ink. The film  delves into this underground world, meeting those involved in Tokyo and questioning the taboo  surrounding an art form that was once so popular. In 2014, he was scientific advisor for the  exhibition Tatoueurs, tatoués at the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, with  particular responsibility for the Japan section. 

Continuing his research, in 2017, after the first French translation of Akimitsu Takagi’s first book  (Irezumi, Denoël), Pascal Bagot contacted the writer’s heirs. During their meeting in Tokyo, he  discovered the existence of photographs taken by the writer, on which he has been working ever  since and for which he is now the representative.

Akimitsu Takagi (1920-1995) is one of the greatest Japanese crime writers of the 20th century. 

Born in Aomori in northern Japan, Takagi became one of the archipelago’s most popular authors  in the period following the end of the Second World War. Born into a family of doctors, a scientist  trained with the country’s elite at Kyoto University – from which he graduated as an engineer –  Takagi left the aeronautical industry after 1945 and took up writing in an unusual way, on the  advice of a fortune-teller. 

His interest in tattoos was a decisive factor in the plot of his first novel, Shisei Satsujin Jiken.  Published in 1948, this investigation into the murders of tattooed people in devastated post-war  Tokyo was an immediate success. It launched his career and earned him a nickname in the  capital’s literary circles: “the tattoo writer”.  

Over time, Takagi proved to be a prodigiously prolific writer. While detective novels were at the  heart of his work, he also wrote history books, children’s novels and essays on divination. When  he died in 1995, Takagi left behind more than 250 stories. In Japan, his books sold several million  copies. 

Shisei Satsujin Jiken was translated into French for the first time in 2016 and published by Denoël  under the title Irezumi. It was subsequently published in Italy (Il mistero della donna tatuata,  Einaudi, 2020) and in England (The Tattoo Murder, Pushkin Press, 2022).