Murakami Yasokichi. - [Irezumi no rireki].

[Privately printed 1929]. 19x13cm publisher's printed wrapper; 12pp and three photo plates and tipped in colour woodcut. Mounted on the front cover is a slip with the characters for 'Murakami' and his seal. Inside a colour woodcut senjafuda likewise with his name and seal. Front cover sometime used as a table mat with a couple of cup rings and splodges, all ok once we're past that. ¶ A rare tattoo autobiography, the title more or less translates as Why I Got My Tattoo. There are no common old books on tattooing but I doubt there are many scarcer than this. Murakami Yasokichi (1857 - 1933) who by the time he wrote this had become president of the Edo Choyukai - the tattooist association - was first tattooed in Taiwan in a ploy to save his life when he had been taken prisoner. The serious tattooing began as a way of hiding that Taiwan marking. The colour woodcut here is Murakami following orders during the Sino-Japanese war of 1894. If you want to know what happened to Murakami afterwards you can find photos of his skin pinned onto a wall in the Tokyo University. I can't find a record of this in any library, in or out of Japan.

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