Quotes from Akimitsu Takagi

If you're exposed to grief long enough, you can become addicted to it, you know. You begin to feel something's missing when­ever you're without sadness. And once this happens, sad­ness becomes a kind of queer delight...

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

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

There's a thin line between obsession and derangement, and I'm not at all sure the professor hasn't crossed it.

Kenzo had become a military medic. He had survived the war with limbs and faculties intact, although even after he was repatriated from the Philippines a sort of tropical torpor seemed to linger in his mind.

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.

Kenzo felt one of his sudden mood-swings coming on. He had first experienced this disturbing phenomenon while stranded in the depths of the mountains of the Philippines, resigned to imminent death. It had been diagnosed as a post-traumatic nervous disorder, and in certain situations it would flare up suddenly, without warning.

Kenzo had no grudge against the American victors, and he thought of saying, "Their appalling tattoos didn't keep them from winning the war.

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.

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.

there was a universal gasp as the audience saw that the man's penis was tattooed from top to bottom as well. No one in the crowd was unaware that this was by far the most sensitive spot on the male body, and most of them had heard stories of how such tattoos were done. While the tattoo master plied his bundles of sharp-tipped needles as gently as possible, an assistant would stretch the skin taut, and four strong men would immobilize the arms and legs of the shrieking, writhing subject.

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.

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.

I don't mind introducing you, but I have to warn you that she has a tendency to take over people's lives. Also, she sometimes comes out with bizarre and even paranoid remarks, and the best thing is just to say 'Yes, yes' and act sympathetic.

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.

you should try living inside the skin of someone with one of those doomed tattoos. In any case, it's not as if I have any great desire to live to a ripe old age, so it doesn't matter. If I can just live a short life, and live it fully, that's enough for me. Cry a little, laugh a little, and then it's over.

The world is full of men with strange obsessions who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Taken one by one, you could certainly say that these leathery specimens were valid works of art. Unlike a gallery of paintings, though, the assembly of human skins created a surrealistic, unsettling atmosphere. Kenzo was staring at the otherworldly torsos in a trance, trying to imagine those desiccated, decorative skins wrapped around living human flesh.

Tattooing is definitely an art form," Kenzo said. "I do agree with you about that, and I've recently learned to appreciate the beauty of the art tattoo. But tell me, speaking not as a collector but strictly as a physician and a rational man, don't you think it's stupid to undergo so much pain and expend so much energy on self-mutilation? I mean, surely no one with an iota of common sense would ever do such a thing.

With a living canvas such as human skin, whether or not a tattoo artist could produce a work of art that satisfied him depended in great measure upon the subject. The ideal, of course, was pale, velvety, fine-grained skin without a single birthmark, scar, or blemish.